Contact Lens
by readerofasaph
Summary: 10 years in the life of Atobe Keigo. Repost of an old fic written on Livejournal two years ago; because this was written before 40.5 came out, some of the backstory conflicts with known canon.
1. Part 1

When Atobe Keigo was six, he attended his great-grandfather's funeral.

When Keigo saw the kimonos they were to wear he thought they looked like the black sharp-edged cloak of Maleficent, who turned into a dragon and tried to scorch Sleeping Beauty's Prince Philip; when he heard the sutra for the dead he thought it sounded like a twisted humming of African animals, as if Simba had never returned and Scar ruled the Pridelands forever; when he saw the black-and-white ribbons tied around the _koden_ envelopes he thought they looked like worms dangling at the edges, like the ones he'd seen on National Geographic last week.

_Koden_, Mother told him, wrapping her arms around his neck so that her diamond-laced ring finger brushed his chin, were condolence money - as if the Atobe family had need of money to feel better, she said, or as if money had condolences to give.

Keigo didn't understand what condolence meant. He burrowed deeper into his mother's arms. Even dressed in black and with her hair pinned back tightly in a bun, she didn't smell of incense or look like Cinderella's stepmother, she just looked like Mother.

He thought condolence might have something to do with being sad. An old lady who looked like father only wrinklier and smelling of old people had patted Keigo on the head this morning and asked him if if he felt sad. Keigo had said no, because he always told the truth. The lady had drawn back, eyes yellow at the edges and glittering like Ursula's when she was about to trick the Little Mermaid, and Mother had placed her hand over his shoulder and apologised. Keigo-chan was not feeling well today, she'd said.

"But I don't feel sad at all," he'd protested as Mother led him away. She'd shrugged and smiled down at him as if to say, _I_ know what you're feeling. But then she'd turned serious and looked at Father, and Keigo had remembered that they needed to be serious for Father's sake. Father had looked sad for days, except for one time when Grandfather said, "Does that mean you're finally going to shoulder your responsibilities, Keisuke?" Then Father had looked angry.

But mostly he just looked shadowed and tired and unhappy, and Keigo kept expecting Father's mouth to drop down at the edges, the way it happened in cartoon figures, but real lips never did that; they just curved up less than usual and turned into a straight, sad line. But Father was so sad that Keigo believed his mouth might actually curve down. It made Keigo want to take a flying leap and tackle him, the way he did when Father appeared in the front doorway at sunset. When that happened Father would drop his briefcase and swing Keigo about in the air, and the dark, weary lines in his face would vanish even as his shirt rumpled and his silky-smooth tie came askew.

Maybe that was what condolence meant, and Keigo thought it was a waste of time, those strange small envelopes with their ribbons waving like caterpillars bent double. Those wouldn't smoothen the lines in Father's face. Only _he_ could, and Mother could, and even they couldn't do that right now.

He looked at the brown altar with its fruits and garish flowers and thought that even if he didn't understand condolence, he did understand money. Money was the reason Greatgrandfather's altar was so tall and ominous and why Mother had rings of diamond and emerald and sapphire. It was the reason why their house was light and airy and always pretty, while other people's homes were cramped and plain and not at all comfortable. It was why Keigo had a tutor and took French and tennis lessons while other children went to the kindergarten with its faded murals and muddy, patchy garden. Keigo sometimes wondered what it would be like to roll in the mud puddles with the other boys and girls, but Mother said he was getting the _best education money could buy_. She told him he was the Atobe heir, and that he would grow up and always have a lot of money, but Father scolded her when he found out she had told Keigo this.

Father told Keigo that money was a tool. "Use it, but never let it use you." It sounded very important, and Keigo wondered what it meant. He wondered if money was a tool like the black chopsticks he used to pick up the black, charred piece that used to be part of Greatgrandfather, and, together with Father, cast the bone into the urn, amid the smell of ash and under the watching, watching eyes of people.

#

Keigo held his chopsticks very well, better than any boy of six (or seven or eight) he knew and as correctly as Grandmother could ask for. He could pick up little chunks of sesame-sprinkled rice and not spill a grain, and he never stuck his chopsticks in food or placed his elbows on the table. This last was partly because he was too short to put his elbows on the table, but he _knew_ he wasn't supposed to do so.

"You've trained him well," Grandmother said to Mother with a grimace, and Keigo felt a little jubilant leap inside, because Grandmother rarely gave Mother compliments. Neither Grandfather nor Grandmother seemed to like Mother much, which was difficult since they had all been living in the same house since Greatgrandfather's funeral. Father still went to work every morning carrying a briefcase and wearing a pressed shirt and silk tie, but now he would come home with a tired shadow lining his brow and strained-looking crinkles around his eyes, and when Keigo ran to hug him, the lines didn't automatically disappear anymore.

It was at dinnertime eating grilled fish and Cantonese sweet-and-sour pork that Keigo first called himself 'ore-sama'. He'd seen it used in an anime show on TV that afternoon; the character was blond and fierce and impressive-looking, which was what Keigo wanted to look like. After he spoke there was a clatter of cutlery and then silence. Mother placed a hand across her mouth, which didn't cover up that she was laughing, and Father said with a strained voice, "Please don't speak like that, Keigo. It's very rude." But the edges of his eyes were twinkling, and the strain sounded more like an attempt not to smile than an attempt to.

So Keigo kept calling himself ore-sama; not all the time, just when he wanted to make grown-ups smile. Grandmother and his tutors tried to scold it out of him, but they couldn't because they secretly liked it, and Keigo knew they liked seeing him do clever and outrageous things. He was an attractive child, Mother said, a charming little boy. Keigo didn't think he was so very little, after all he would be seven in a few months, but he agreed that he was charming because all the grown-ups treated him like he was, he was an attractive boy and knew it and used it.

#

Hyoutei Gakuen was a highly select institution, particularly at the elementary school level where only one in six applicants were accepted, but Keigo was bound to go there since his father was an alumnus, and although his mother wasn't she was still a Keio University graduate. Grandmother explained this to him one morning after his maths tutor had left and before the French teacher arrived. Keigo asked if there would be maths at Hyoutei, and Grandmother said there certainly would.

He didn't like the thought of that. Keigo was very good at maths but he didn't like it, just like he was good at French but didn't like it. But he didn't say that about French because Mother loved French, and on lazy afternoons she would sit at the grand piano in the living room and play music by Debussy and Ravel. (Mother always said ra-be-ru instead of Ravel. Keigo tried to correct her twice, but she kept saying it the wrong way and after that he didn't try.) The chords would mingle and float through the corridors up to the schoolroom, where Keigo would sit with his chin in his hands and stare out at the sun while his tutors taught him how to write _kanji_. Later Keigo would always associate French music with dust motes in sunlight and the neat, black strokes of calligraphy, rendered soft by drowsy heat.

He was not really fond of French music. It was muted and lovely like the opal on Mother's favourite necklace, and at its best it sounded like the mingling of rainbows and water. But mostly it reminded Keigo of girl's cartoons, the Japanese type, pink and pale and washed-out; soft and sweet like candyfloss which was okay for Mother but too sticky for Keigo, although it was not till he heard other types of music that he came to realise this.

He went with Father and Mother to a concert one winter evening, wrapped in a chocolate-brown jacket and black sports shoes that lit up in dazzling lights when you walked in them. The singer was delicate with slanted eyes and straight sleek Japanese hair, and she was wearing a soft frilly dress that looked like springtime and white butterflies fluttering amongst peach blossoms. Keigo thought she was pretty but boring, like Mother's parties except for when adults clapped and praised him for how clever he was, but then she parted her pink-painted lips to sing and her voice was nothing like he thought it would be.

It was like autumn, red and gold against peeling bark and the wind shaking leaves off gnarled branches. It was deep and rich like a lake at the end of summer, into which you could look down and see the silver gleam of fishes and the green of underwater weeds, so clear you would see the pebble patterns on the lakebed, black and brown and grey. The girl's voice rose sharp and bright like the sun blazing on a river and there was something old and powerful in it as well, like torrents of waterfall splashing over well-worn rock, and Keigo went home and tugged at Father's coat, asking where the music came from.

Mendelssohn, said Mother, a German composer. Keigo got up the next morning and nagged his French tutor to teach him some German, and once he'd finished his exercises in record time she gave in and taught him a few words: _Guten Tag._ _Auf Wiedersehen_. _Gesundheit_. They sounded strong and rough on his tongue, and after Father told him that they taught German at Hyoutei, Keigo spent his next math lesson making crosses on his calendar with marker pen, counting off the weeks till April.


	2. Part 2

Keigo knew that at Hyoutei he was going to meet a lot of other boys and girls. He'd wondered for a moment whether he'd get to roll in mud puddles with the others, but since Mother seemed to approve of Hyoutei he'd decided it wasn't that sort of place. So it was a surprise to him when a sunburnt, spiky-haired boy came up to him on the first day of class with scuffed shoes and a dirt-marked collar and said, "I heard you're Atobe Keigo."

"Yes, I am," Keigo said, although he wasn't used to being called Atobe Keigo, just Keigo, and the other boy scowled.

"My brother told me that you're really, really rich," he said with his hands folded across his chest and for a moment Keigo wondered if being rich was something bad. But he looked at the other children watching with wide eyes and then back at the boy, who looked like he'd chewed on bitter gourd and wanted to spit it out, and realised it was something quite different. It was like the way he could always tell with adults, whether they were really angry or whether they were secretly trying not to smile but felt like they had to pretend to be angry; and what this boy really meant was that he wasn't rich but Keigo was, and this upset the boy.

Keigo remembered that to be rich meant that you had a lot of money, and so he looked straight at the other boy's eyes, which were sharp and dark and bright, and said: "Yes, I am."

This made the boy glare even harder, but Keigo kept his gaze clear and straight the way he had been taught to, and eventually the other boy looked away. Keigo sat back at his desk and talked to the other children, who came over to chat after a few minutes, just as the spiky-haired boy walked over to the classroom sink and actually _did_ spit into it.

Keigo thought this was very rude, but later he learned that the boy, whose name was Shishido Ryou, was having a bad cold and maybe this was why he walked up to people and glared at them and spat into sinks, although Keigo thought it was because Shishido was simply that sort of boy. But he didn't say that aloud. Father had told him before that it didn't pay to speak badly about other people. Keigo thought it didn't really matter, as long as the person you were mocking wasn't popular with the other children either. But Shishido was popular, even though his uniform was always smeared and messy and his manners weren't very good.

Manners didn't seem to matter that much at Hyoutei. The teacher was insistent on it, almost as insistent as Mother and Grandmother and his tutors had been, but she couldn't pay attention to twenty children and teach art and maths at the same time. After a while Keigo got used to people slouching over their desks or yawning without covering their mouths. And at lunchtime everyone would run out into the fields and play _Kagome_ or _Hana Ichi Momme_ or sometimes they would just play Tag and run and catch each other. There were no mud puddles in Hyoutei, even when it rained, because the soccer field was perfectly maintained and green and lush everywhere you looked, but now and then Keigo came back with grass-stains on his shirt and Mother would shake her head. But Father would laugh and said he remembered playing on the Hyoutei fields when he was Keigo's age.

Keigo was often in charge of those games because he was good at running and catching. During Sports Day that summer their class came first because he and Shishido were on the relay team. In the individual events Shishido won most of the races but Keigo came first overall because he was better at long-jump and high-jump. Keigo liked the medal with its red ribbon and glittery gold ("Fake," Grandmother said.). But he didn't really like running or jumping, just like he didn't really like French or mathematics.

He liked organising games for the other boys and girls, though, and when the maple leaves began to turn green-yellow and dry he knew it was nearly time for his birthday again, and began planning the party in his head. Gold and silver streamers inside the house, he said to Mother. Black and blue and white and yellow balloons around the garden. Fruit slices and sushi and black pepper chicken wings. Cheerful pop music, the kind Keigo thought was annoying but he knew most of his friends liked, and crackers for everyone and presents at the door when they left and maybe a clown to do magic tricks.

"What about games?" Mother asked, writing in her sunflower-decorated diary.

"Let's choose some games," Keigo said. "But don't get someone to run them. I want to do that myself."

Her fountain pen paused in midair. "By yourself? Are you sure?"

_Definitely_, Keigo said, and Mother looked unsure but in the end she gave in, she always did. Keigo let Father help with the messier games like the one outside which needed a lot of flour and a huge tub of water, but otherwise he was in charge and everything went perfectly. In the afternoon his classmates arrived wearing bright clothes and carrying colourful presents, eyes wide as they looked up the driveway and down the entrance hall and saw the balloons and ribbons and tassels pinned to the walls, the chandelier and garden lamps all lit so that even in daylight the place shone with a sleek unearthly glow.

"You're _really_ rich," Shishido said to Keigo. He still seemed jealous, especially when he saw the garden and its pathways and hedges where you could explore for hours and never finish, but he didn't glare and when he met Keigo's parents he was as polite as Shishido could be.

Of all the birthday presents Keigo received, Shishido's was the most peculiar. Keigo opened the presents towards the end, after everyone's bellies were full with frankfurters and ice-cream cake and their legs tired from running and doing cartwheels and their eyes sleepy from too much colour and light. He opened each present one by one, and always acted like he was happy and made sure to say something good about the gift, although nobody gave him anything he wanted or didn't have already. When he came to Shishido's it was small and wrapped in black and gold tissue paper. Keigo undid the thin silver ribbon and then stared.

"What's this?" he asked, because although Keigo knew a lot of things he didn't know what this was. It looked a bit like duct tape only narrower and thicker and blacker. He held it up to the light and squinted.

Shishido scowled, but that seemed to be because Shishido scowled when he couldn't think of anything else to put on his face. "It's grip tape," he said. "I know you play tennis, so I thought it might come in useful one day."

_Tennis_? Keigo thought. "Do you play tennis?"

"I started a few weeks ago," Shishido said. He added: "I'm sure you play better than I do."

Keigo was still puzzled, but then he remembered his manners and thanked Shishido and as he was saying goodbye to the guests he reminded himself to ask his coach, the next time they met, what grip tape was used for.

#

The grip tape was top quality, the coach told him: the same type that Father used, and Father was the local country club champion and known throughout Tokyo as an amateur player.

"How do you use it?" Keigo asked, and the coach showed him how to wind the tape around the handle. He explained how it made it easier to hold the racquet, especially during a match when your palms were wet and slippery.

"But it's not that important unless you're playing in tournaments," the coach added.

"Father has played in tennis tournaments before, right?" Keigo said to Mother that evening while she was in her favourite armchair, working on a cross-stitch pattern of hearts and teddy bears.

Mother looked up and smiled. She was wearing a sky-blue skirt with lots of layers: soft and translucent, with marble-cloud swirls of white embroidery. "Yes, he did," she said. "Your father is a very good tennis player; he was the Kantou regional champion for doubles last year."

"I'm going to be National champion," Keigo said.

That made Mother laugh. She put down her needlework and said, "Of course you will, darling." And she patted Keigo on the cheek, which he didn't mind as long as she didn't do it in front of the other boys, but he did mind her laughing. He understood that Mother wasn't laughing because she didn't believe he could become a tennis champion, but because she believed he could, and it didn't really matter to her whether he became one or not.

Mother always said Keigo could do anything, which wasn't true because Keigo had gone into the kitchen once and asked to help prepare dinner, and Grandmother had said no, let the servants do it. Keigo knew he could bake a little, because they'd made shortbread in class once and his had been the best. But he couldn't make roast beef or slice tiny pieces of carrot into fan-shaped garnish the way their cook could.

It was just the same as for English or French. He was top of the class for both languages but he couldn't talk to people in English, or read a book in French. Keigo knew he was pretty good at a lot of things but he wanted to be _very_ good at some things, just like the girl in the back row who used to live in Beijing and spoke Mandarin perfectly.

He told his coach about wanting to play in tournaments and his coach said they would need to have a meeting with Father and Mother, to decide what sort of training he should have. (Keigo liked the word _training_. Before he had always just had lessons, but _training_ sounded like it was building up to something.)

"How good do you want him to be?" his coach asked his parents.

"That's up to him," Father said, and Mother looked down at Keigo and smiled, but Keigo didn't want to smile now, it was very important that everyone was serious.

"I want to be the best in Japan," he said.

Father was frowning the way he did when he was about to say something he thought would upset Keigo, and it made Keigo want to say _of course I'm going to be the best, don't you think I can_? Mother was still smiling as if she thought Keigo was cute, and it made him want to push her away; he was almost eight, and he wanted to show her that he could do serious things, not just cute things.

But then they all looked at the coach and the coach didn't look as if he thought Keigo had said something stupid or cute or impossible, he just looked thoughtful.

"He'll need to practice more," the coach said finally, and as Father and Mother exchanged glances Keigo knew that he had, as usual, succeeded in getting his own way.


	3. Part 3

He lost his first tournament.

It happened in spring before school started, just when the cold was starting to leach out of the air and colour reappear on the trees. Keigo watched tiny leaves budding from dew-soaked saplings outside Grandmother's greenhouse, which was emerald and glaring and riotous like a fish market all year round. The tennis courts were right next to the greenhouse, which would have been dangerous for the greenhouse, but it was made of special fiberglass that didn't break easily (Keigo wasn't sure what fiberglass was; he thought maybe it was glass that had been wound into thread like cotton, but Grandmother's greenhouse didn't look like cotton.). And there was a high fence with diamond-shaped netting all around the courts, nearly as tall as their house was.

Even if the fence hadn't been there, Keigo didn't think he would have hit the greenhouse. He was very good at making the ball go where he wanted it to. It hardly ever landed outside the line, unless he was cross and playing badly on purpose. Then it went out all the time. This had happened one afternoon when he was learning how to do backhands and no matter what he did the coach said that it was wrong. Keigo got mad and started doing everything wrong, and after half an hour the coach stopped the lesson and said, "Thirty push-ups."

Keigo, who was not used to being spoken to in that tone, stared up at him.

The coach tapped his foot on the ground twice, hard and sharp, and said: "If you're not going to learn anything, we might as well work on fitness. Get down and do thirty push-ups!"

Keigo got down on his hands and feet and did the push-ups while his coach counted them out loud. He was very good at sports but by the time they got to twenty-six his shoulders were sore and straining. After he reached thirty it was very difficult to not just lie on the ground but stand up and face the coach, back straight and chin raised. It was even more difficult to run the twenty laps around the courts that the coach immediately asked him to do. But Keigo ran them, and after that he always tried his best during tennis practice, even when he couldn't seem to get the moves right.

He liked practicing tennis with the coach. It was tiring and sometimes slow but never boring, and the coach could always tell whether something was too difficult for Keigo, or whether it was too easy, which happened more often. When it did the coach would make it harder, like instead of just serving the ball Keigo would have to serve into a large square basket in the opposite court. This kept things interesting, unlike in English class where Keigo would finish his exercises before anyone else did and had to sit there folding paper planes (although he never threw them across the room like Shishido did).

Once a week Grandfather would drive Keigo to the tennis club where he would practice with other boys his age, and although some of them had been playing longer than he had Keigo was already one of the best. It was one winter Saturday after Keigo had played the oldest boy (he was nine) in the group and won 7-5 that he asked the coach when he could start playing in tournaments. Then the coach had told him about the children's tournament in March. After that Keigo played tennis everyday with Father and Grandfather or even Mother, although she wasn't very good, and watched the days grow long and the flowerbeds turn green while he grew faster and stronger and more accurate.

The first two rounds of the competition were a disappointment, although Mother and even Father clapped and told him he was doing a wonderful job. Keigo took a drink of water and used his towel to wipe the sweat clinging to his forehead. When he was done the coach sat next to him and asked him how he thought the matches had gone.

"They're not even as good as the boys in the training group," Keigo complained. He felt dull, as though something inside him had sunk deep down and wasn't coming up again. He'd hoped he could tell everyone at school about how he won his first tournament, but he hadn't wanted to win like this. It was almost embarrassing.

"The semifinals won't be as easy,' said the coach. "Your next opponent is Fuji Syuusuke," As Keigo looked curiously at him, he added, "You need to play your best."

Fuji Syuusuke was the same height as Keigo but skinnier and with more angles – a pointed chin and sharp collarbones that stuck out and fingers that looked like they played piano. His voice was soft and polite and his eyes large and pretty, although when they shook hands to begin he smiled and then his eyes went narrow and nearly disappeared. When Keigo threw the ball into the air for the first serve he wondered what Fuji's playing would be like, and when they finished he felt sour and angry inside, as if he might send a tennis ball right into Grandmother's greenhouse.

"You did well," said the coach, and Mother and Father added their agreement, and Father added that his opponent had been very good. Keigo knew that already, but he kept quiet because the coach nodded. Fuji Syuusuke, he explained, was probably the best player of his age in Tokyo. People were already calling him a prodigy, and he had some of the most beautiful technique the coach had ever seen. Keigo had noticed this, that Fuji wasn't very fast or very strong, but when he did a backhand it was exactly the way the coach always told Keigo to do it, and when he served the ball it looked like the tennis instruction videos Father sometimes brought home.

"His form is absolutely flawless," said the coach, and Keigo made up his mind that he would learn to play flawless tennis, and more than that he would be faster and stronger and better than Fuji Syuusuke.

#

Hyoutei did not start teaching German until third year. This was all right with Keigo because in April he met their new form teacher. The teacher was curly-haired with dark eyes and a long hooked nose, and when the girl from Beijing asked him why he said that he was half-Greek. As soon as they had a break, Keigo went up to him and asked if he could teach him Greek. The teacher laughed and said he would teach the class a few words, and if they wanted he could teach them more.

Greek was louder than French and more rhythmic than English. Keigo thought it was strong like German only instead of forest and crackling fires it reminded him of sea waves and sun-baked stone. So for ten minutes every day the class would gather on the green rug at the front of the room and listen as the teacher taught them new Greek words. Some of the boys thought it was boring but everyone went along because Keigo insisted on it. Keigo was popular; he was class monitor this year because his classmates had voted for him. A sullen-looking boy with a flat nose had said it was because Atobe was _rich_, but then Shishido had told him to shut up.

Keigo wasn't really friends with Shishido, although they played in the same games every lunchtime. But he was glad Shishido was still in the same class. Most of his classmates were different from last year, and it was good to see some familiar faces.

He liked most of his new classmates, especially a small, good-looking boy called Taki Haginosuke who liked Greek nearly as much as Keigo did. The two of them were the best in the class, and would pester the form teacher three or four times a week to teach them extra words. Keigo was better than Taki was, though. ("But you're the best at _everything_," Taki said.)

But Taki played tennis nearly as well as Keigo did. After Keigo found that out the two of them would play a match every week, and by August Keigo had won eight matches while Taki had won seven. Shishido had joined in once or twice, but he had only been playing for less than a year, and he wasn't as good.

Taki played in tournaments and had a small collection of medals in his room. This would have made Keigo jealous if he hadn't won his first trophy in April and then won another competition in September. He was still working hard at tennis, and although he didn't know if he could beat Fuji Syuusuke he could tell that his balls were getting faster and his form getting better.

Taki didn't work hard at tennis. This surprised Keigo, who thought that anyone as good as Taki was would have wanted to go on and win more medals.

Taki shrugged when Keigo said this to him. "It's not important to me," he said. "I don't like tennis that much, anyway, and my parents say that if I don't get better grades at school I'll have to quit."

"Don't do that," Keigo said, alarmed. Mother and Father would never have made him quit tennis. But then Keigo's grades were always excellent. He was top of the class or near the top for everything, especially English, which he was so good at that the teacher said he could probably pass junior high exams. Keigo liked English better than he did French, and he worked hard at it because the teachers said it would help him learn German next year. He became so good at English he could read books in it, not picture books but real books filled with words from the top of the page to the bottom.

Towards November, the form teacher came to Keigo with a large paperback book. "I found this in a bookstore last weekend," he said. "I thought you might like to borrow it over the holidays."

Keigo took the book. It was thick with gilt-edged pages and tall people wearing flowing robes on the cover. "_Stories of Gods and Heroes: The Abbreviated Bulfinch's Mythology_," he said, feeling the words with his lips as he read them out.

"It's an English book, but it's about Ancient Greek culture," the form teacher said, smiling his startling, white-toothed smile. "I think you'll enjoy it."

"Thank you," said Keigo, and he spent that Christmas poring over the tale of Prometheus and Pandora, and imagined himself meeting the Sphinx while outside his window the wind blew cold and the garden shivered with multicoloured lights.


	4. Part 4

Keigo's third year of school was filled with German. It was filled with tennis as well, but mostly it was German: _Guten Morgen. Ich spiele gern Tennis. In der ersten Stunde habe ich Naturwissenschaften._ By June Keigo was working on exercises from his own special textbook, bent over his desk at the back of the class while the other students chanted the days of the week out loud.

German was the only class for which Keigo sat at the back. The rest of the time he sat in the second row (he was too tall for the first), which meant he could ask the teacher questions easily, and he could also get his classmates' attention when he wanted to. This was useful because Keigo was class monitor again this year. While he enjoyed the responsibility, he wondered whether everyone had chosen him just because they couldn't think of anyone else. At the beginning of May he'd overhead a first-year asking who the tall boy with wavy hair was and a second-year girl had answered: "Oh, that's Atobe Keigo; he's really rich and smart and good at sports; everyone says he'll be student body president in a couple of years."

It made Keigo feel flattered but a little strange. He knew he was clever and good at sports, and he supposed, wealthy (although it was Father and Mother who had the money, not him). But when people said that it felt like they were talking about someone else, an Atobe Keigo who was good at everything and popular with everyone, not Keigo who read too much and never managed to learn piano and still couldn't hit a perfect backhand.

Even Haginosuke - he and Taki were on a first-name basis now - seemed to believe in this other Atobe Keigo. The two of them still went to pester their old form teacher for Greek lessons, and although Taki played less tennis than he used to they still had matches every other week. One Sunday at the end of May Haginosuke dropped his racquet after losing 3-6 and complained, "You've gotten so _good_," and: "Isn't there anything you're not good at?"

"I'm bad at piano," Keigo said, and Haginosuke raised his eyebrows as if to say, _Really?_ But Keigo was telling the truth, and he didn't think he was so much better at tennis than Haginosuke was. It was just that the other boy didn't try very hard, while Keigo ran laps three times a week until his muscles were tight and sore and did swing practice nearly as often.

But it was true that his playing was getting better and better. He'd won four tournaments now, and had a string of bronze and silver medals besides. Once at club practice a visiting player had asked, "Who is that boy?" in the same tone that coach had used for Fuji Syuusuke last year.

Keigo liked tennis because when he played people would forget it was him and just see that it was good tennis. It was unlike French or Science or Athletics, which were all things he was good at, but when he topped the class it was just _oh, that's Atobe Keigo_, and it was expected to happen. Keigo wasn't afraid of not living up to their expectations, but it was good to have tennis which wasn't easy like any of those things. And when the coach said "Well done," Keigo knew that he meant it and that Keigo deserved it.

He was so busy with German and tennis and organising festivals and Sports Day as class monitor that he went to see the Greek teacher less and less often. He hadn't forgotten about it; it just seemed to fade into the background amid everything else that was going on – at least until one morning, when Father announced over breakfast that they were going to Greece for the summer.

#

It was not Keigo's first time on a plane, belted into a huge cushiony chair while ladies in beautiful makeup brought orange juice and plastic toys that broke if you fiddled too much with them. But it was the first time he'd stepped out of the airport and seen such a blue sky, cloudless and flooded with sunlight so intense the air seemed to shimmer right before his eyes.

Father said the atmosphere got cleaner and the sky brighter the further out you went, so they boarded a ship with a Prussian blue hull and little round windows that looked like spyholes, and set off from Corsica on a cruise that would take them right around the Mediterranean and pass through Turkey. Keigo liked to stand on the front deck facing the sun, breathing in the salt-drenched air while Mother fussed with sunscreen and shades and tried to make him wear a hat. They would watch the ship weave its way from island to island – and there were so many islands: rocky, irregular and soaked with light; sand-encrusted jewels in the dappled and living cloak of sun-glitter that was the Aegean Sea.

Keigo swam along those beaches until his arms hurt and his back was burnt and peeling, his hair and fingers coated in golden sand. He ran barefoot down the piers of Naxos and padded through Apollo's Terrace of the Lions at Delos, eyes greedy and wide with longing. He explored the mosaic-like streets of Rhodes until Father was tired of taking pictures and Keigo's mind could hardly store any more Byzantine churches or cobbled alleyways; and when they came to Crete he stared in awe at the palace there and told Mother the story of the Minotaur, and how Ariadne fell in love with Theseus.

But what he loved most of all was when the ship headed north and they came to the scattered stones that used to be the ancient city of Troy. In the daylight they seemed plain and square but then he ran his fingers along their vine-filled cracks and they became a fierce dark silhouette against the Greek sunset, hailed by the crashing of Mediteranean waves. And when they arrived at Athens and Keigo saw the approaching white pillars of the Acropolis he imagined the goddess Athena, golden and armoured, hands outstretched as olive leaves emerged from the dry and rock-speckled hillside.

"I want to read Homer," he told Father as they were exploring the city museum, and later for his ninth birthday he asked for a Greek tutor as a present.

#

The next important event in Keigo's year had nothing to do with Greek, nor was it related to tennis. It was only slightly to do with German, and that was because in October Keigo looked up from his bilingual edition of Michael Ende's _Momo_, and realised that the word _Lorelei_ (the teacher was teaching folk legends that week) on the blackboard looked fuzzy. It wasn't fuzzy the way blue-green chalk normally was but instead vague as if someone had put several layers of colourless film over it. Keigo stared at the board for so long that the teacher paused halfway through storytelling and asked if something was wrong.

_I'm fine_, Keigo said, but a week later he was doing multiball drills when he hit a ball out of bounds. It landed against the high fence and seemed to blur into it in a blotch of yellow-green.

Keigo thought he had better tell his parents. Father and Mother looked at each other and then Mother said she would take him to the optometrist tomorrow. This proved to be a grey-haired, balding man with smiling eyes, who took Keigo and Mother into a shadowed room with a light projector, made him stare at what seemed like dozens of charts, and then said in a cheerful voice, that Keigo would have to start wearing glasses.


	5. Part 5

If third year had been about German, then fourth year was about girls. Or rather, it was the year in which Keigo began to notice girls noticing him.

Spring term introduced drama to the curriculum as a new subject and brought Akutagawa Jirou to Keigo's class for the first time – surprising, since they had been schoolmates for years. Keigo had seen Akutagawa around school before, the curly pale hair with long sleepy eyes that curved into joyful lines whenever the boy was fully awake – which didn't happen very often, according to Taki Haginosuke.

"Jirou's weird, but not in a bad way," he said. "I was in his class last year, and it was funny watching him snore while the teacher droned on. He never seems to get into trouble for it either. He's kind of like you, that way."

Keigo ignored Haginosuke's final sentence, and asked instead whether Jirou ever woke up. "He seemed to be asleep the whole time," he complained. "Not that I mind, but the teachers asked me about it. As if it were my responsibility."

Shishido Ryou snorted. "If you ordered people around less, maybe teachers would stop thinking you're in charge of the class."

Keigo made a face at him and took another sip of mineral water. The three of them were resting at the edge of the tennis courts at the end of one of their tennis get-togethers, which had become increasingly infrequent these days. Keigo was the only one who played in tournaments now, and while he still enjoyed playing just for fun, there was less and less time to do it in.

Shishido continued: "Jirou's all right. But when he wakes up, he really wakes up. It's like he's schizophrenic."

"I'm impressed. I hadn't expected you to know what that word meant."

"Ahhh, shut up, Atobe." Shishido chucked a tennis ball at his face. Keigo caught the ball neatly and began tossing it in the air, catching it as it came down.

"He wakes up during art," Haginosuke said in answer to Keigo's question. "And woodwork and workshop and things like that. Once we were learning how to varnish tables and Jirou got so excited he picked up a brush and started waving it around while he jumped around the room. Serikawa-sensei docked him points for breaking safety rules. He's really good, though; his paper planes are waaay better than Shishido's. Aren't they?" he appealed to Shishido, who had just bitten a large chunk out of his apple.

"I suppose so," Shishido said, shrugging. Keigo had noticed that Shishido didn't seem to like Haginosuke much. It was different from the way Shishido didn't like Keigo. Maybe it was simply because Haginosuke was soft and bookish and didn't care very much about things, whereas Shishido was small but sharp and aggressive about everything he did. .

Haginosuke cut his hair very short these days, while Shishido's hair was getting longer. Soon it would reach past his shoulders. But Haginosuke with short hair still looked more like a girl than Shishido with long hair. Shishido always looked like he was fresh from a grass-fight; he was scrappy and tough. Keigo approved of tough people, but Haginosuke was different - they had been playing tennis together for such a long time, and he was still the only person Keigo could discuss Greek with who wasn't an adult.

"I think he gets more excited in PE, though," Shishido added, still talking about Akutagawa. "He's really good at sports – he might be better than you, Atobe."

That was true. Akutagawa had come in first at last year's Sports Day - Shishido had taken second place, while Keigo, who'd been too busy helping out to participate in more than a handful of events, came third.

Not that Keigo intended to let Shishido get away with saying things like that.

"And he only started playing tennis in summer last year, but he's beaten me already," Haginosuke said.

"Really?" Keigo asked. That _was_ unusual. Haginosuke was still one of the best tennis players for their age, although Keigo privately thought he was weaker than he used to be. But maybe that was just because Keigo was stronger now. Shishido still had trouble defeating Haginosuke in a match. "Maybe we should ask him for a game. Doubles matches and then singles."

"Count me out," Shishido said with a scowl. He was attempting to balance his racket on top of one finger, a trick he'd been working on for weeks now.

"What, afraid you'll lose?" Keigo asked.

Shishido's brow darkened. He let his tennis bag down on the bench with a thump. "All right then; I'll come. But only because I want to see you lose to that guy."

"Not even in your dreams," said Keigo.

#

Akutagawa _did_ wake up during art class and workshop. Haginosuke was right; it was extremely funny watching him bouncing around the class, especially after he'd just spent three hours slumped motionless across his desk. It was amusing too to see the teachers shake their heads and smile, when any other student would have had weeks of punishment for breaking the rules. Keigo didn't like being thought of as cute anymore – they really shouldn't be doing that sort of thing at their age. But it seemed to suit Akutagawa.

Keigo finally managed to organise a friendly match in the last weekend of May; tennis tournaments, school elections and Shishido's unexpected commitment to the History Club ("You joined the _History_ Club?" Haginosuke asked, although Keigo wasn't surprised.) postponed the initial date by several weeks. It was held at Keigo's home, and Keigo was impressed since Akutugawa-kun was the first person he could remember that hadn't reacted either with amazement or jealousy on seeing the Atobe mansion – mostly because the blond-haired boy was drooping with sleep from the moment his parents dropped him off in front of the gates, to the time they reached the courts and Haginosuke planted a racquet in his hand.

Even then, he didn't really wake up until he lost the first two points. By that time Keigo was already twitching with impatience: _if you're going to play, then play seriously._. But Akutagawa's eyes suddenly snapped to life; he held his racquet forward ready to return Keigo's serve, and there was a keenness to his movements that hadn't been there before.

The score ended up being 7-5.

As they came up to the net at the end of the match Jirou didn't accept Keigo's outstretched hand, just waved his arms in the air while grinning a wide, silly grin. "That was awesome! You're so good at tennis. Can we play a match like that again? "

"Is he always like that?" Keigo asked Haginosuke, when they were eating slices of orange afterwards. Jirou was still wide-awake and exploring the garden nearby. He leaped at a flock of sparrows perched on a willow tree. They scattered in a whirr of wings and chirping.

"Of course, haven't we told you already? You looked like you were having fun out there."

"Aa. He plays good tennis, even though he's a little strange," Keigo said.

"As if you're one to talk," Shishido said.

"_You_ can just shut up," Keigo said. But he was too tired and feeling too cheerful to think of insults, and from then on Jirou became a regular tennis partner, more so than Shishido and Haginosuke were.

#

He did not think much of it at first. It began with small things, such as a Japanese class in July when Keigo felt the weight of someone staring at his back, and turned to see the girl from Beijing hastily lowering her head. Later that August he was sitting in a maple tree outside the music rooms, back resting against the trunk just at the point where it split into its topmost branches, a copy of the _Neverending Story_ lying open in his lap, when he heard someone giggling.

"Taki-kun is cute!" said a girl's voice. He recognised it as belonging to one of his classmates from second year. "But Atobe-kun is better. He has _style_."

"Atobe-kun?" This girl's voice was deeper and prettier. It was also familiar; after thinking hard Keigo realised it belonged to one of the fifth-year class monitors. He'd met her before at school council meetings. "He's okay, I guess. I can't get used to seeing him wear glasses."

Keigo was not used to overhearing people discussing his looks. He closed his book and drew his knees too his chest, bending his head down to hear the conversation better.

"But the glasses make him look _cute_," said the first girl, giggling again. "Have you heard him call himself ore-sama before? It's so funny when he does it. And the teachers don't even tell him off."

"He does seem to get away with a lot of things without being punished," the older girl said. "But he's so spoilt. He wants to get his own way all the time. He's horrible, even if he's good-looking."

"As if you weren't staring at him for ages last school assembly. Admit it, you like him too!"

"Stop saying that!" Keigo's view of the ground was partially shrouded by fan-shaped leaves, but he could just barely make out, from where he sat, that the fifth-year monitor had reddened.

The younger girl clapped her hands. "Ha, ha! I knew it!"

"My son, the lady-killer," Mother said when Keigo told his parents the story a few days later. "I always knew you were very attractive, dear; I'm not surprised at all."

"But," Keigo said. It wasn't that he didn't understand what this was all about; it was just that it was _peculiar_.

Father shook his head. "Girls grow up faster than boys," he said. "You'll get used to it."

Keigo found it difficult to get used to, although years from now he would look back and realise that fourth year had been easy as far as potentially embarrassing attention went. There was one student council meeting where he caught the fifth-year monitor's eye and she looked away so quickly her ponytail smacked against her chair, but aside from that and some whispering and giggling, no other incidents occurred that summer. There were no love notes or chocolate. That would come later.

In autumn rehearsals began for the senior school play. Keigo wanted to be director, but since the student body president had taken the position, Keigo contented himself with auditioning successfully for the male lead. The female lead was a short girl with pigtails and a rich, bell-like voice that projected right to the end of the school hall without needing a microphone. She was playing a _kitsune_ that left her forest after it was burned down in a fire. Atobe played a young man trying to save his village from being attacked by the local lord.

This young man could do nothing right in the eyes of the kitsune, and when Natsume (that was the girl's name) was on stage nobody could tell whether she was being herself or whether she was acting, since her real opinion of Keigo seemed to be exactly that. After she'd stormed at Keigo for the fourth time in a single rehearsal, the student body president stepped in.

"Please hold your temper, Natsume-san. Your behaviour would still be unacceptable if Atobe-kun's acting was poor, which it isn't. _That_ is obvious to everyone."

Even his intervention didn't change the situation much, and Natsume continued to criticise Keigo's acting, singing, choice of clothing ("Is she for real?" Haginosuke asked. "We're in _school uniform_."), body language, and just about everything that could be abused within a two-hour rehearsal. The only reason she was not removed from her role as the _kitsune_ was the lack of rehearsal time, and the fact that both Natsume and Keigo were extraordinarily good at acting. The understudies didn't even come close. Keigo for his part was reluctant to take revenge, partly because several teachers and about half the student council were involved in this play, none of whom would approve of him being rude to a girl no matter how badly-behaved she was; but it was mostly because he wanted the performance to go ahead.

The play was held in January, and after the young man had saved the _kitsune_'s life and his village the whole cast headed backstage, and Natsume for the first time said something to Keigo that wasn't a glaring insult.

"I suppose that wasn't so bad," she said. "Even your acting was better than usual. Of course that doesn't mean much, seeing how bad it is normally."

Keigo could always tell what adults were thinking, just like he'd always been able to read Shishido and Haginosuke. Other children were no different, and it was a useful skill, especially during meetings and school council and whenever he needed to persuade or hurt people into doing what he wanted them to do. But this time he thought it might have been more comfortable not knowing.

"You say that," he said, "but it's not because you think I'm bad. Quite the contrary, isn't it?"

Her eyes widened. She still hadn't removed her stage makeup, and her eyelids were an awkward mixture of red and violet. But even beneath the heavy layer of powder, Keigo could see the blush forming on her face and stretching past her cheekbones. She lifted one hand and for a moment he thought she was going to slap him, but she didn't. Instead, she ran to the dressing room, the other cast members staring as she went.

She did not speak to him again for more than a year, by which time Keigo had all but forgotten her, lost within a sea of names and girls' eyes.


	6. Part 6

It was just after Golden Week of fifth year that Keigo first met Kabaji Munehiro. Instead of playing soccer with their classmates as they usually did, Keigo and Haginosuke had chosen to spend that Tuesday lunchtime with the student council treasurer and his retinue, all of whom sat in the small northwestern grove the treasurer's followers had staked out as their personal ground. Within twenty minutes, Keigo was certain that neither the treasurer nor his two best friends ever did anything interesting at lunchtime. Neither did the row of girls sitting on a nearby tree root, floral patterns on their nails and butterfly clips in their hair.

He put his lunchbox away, not without a wistful glance at the book he'd found in the library this morning - _Selected Plays_ by Sophocles, the Japanese translation. His turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and rye bread had not lasted long, and either reading or listening to his disc player to kill the time would be unforgivably rude, according to Mother. It wasn't as if the treasurer were a particularly courteous boy, but since he was pretending to enjoy Keigo's company, Keigo should at least return the favour.

Keigo adjusted his glasses. He looked at the treasurer, who was seated on a smooth, dark rock and trying to make conversation with Haginosuke. Haginosuke was not usually impolite, but he'd already covered his mouth to yawn three times since lunch began. _You're so stupid, Uekawa._ That the treasurer disliked Keigo was obvious. Even Jirou had twigged to it when the invitation to lunch came. If Uekawa wanted to pretend otherwise, he needed to adjust his face so he didn't look as if he were chewing on sour lemons.

"Aahhh...whoops!" The girl with pink nails and the showiest hairpiece had stepped on a branch as she stood up, and was now wobbling, arms outstretched to find her balance. Keigo held out a hand to steady her. After a few moments she found her footing again, and without letting go of Keigo's arm she smiled up at him. "Thank you, Atobe-kun!"

_You did that on purpose._ Keigo pretended not to notice the glare Uekawa sent him, and wondered if he should make an excuse and leave. Haginosuke didn't seem like he could take much more of this, even if Keigo was used to it by now.

He was just running through a list of plausible reasons when they heard the sound of voices coming from beyond the clearing. Uekawa was the first to notice, after Keigo; he looked distinctly irritated. Moments later, Haginosuke cocked his head to one side to listen as well.

"...What are you doing sitting here all by yourself? Don't you like us?

"Maybe he looks down on us because he's so tall."

"That's for sure. You're so big. You must eat too much!"

"I bet when he grows up he'll be so tall he hits his head on the ceiling. Isn't that so, Kabaji?"

"It sounds like those fourth years again. Those kids are ruining our private lunch space," said a curly-haired brunette irritably.

"They're so noisy," said Uekawa's first best friend, stretching his arms as he lay back on the grass. "Can't you go shut them up, Takahashi?"

"Why don't _you_ go do it yourself? You're always getting me to do all the work."

"I'll talk to them." It sounded like an ordinary tone of voice, except for those who had played tennis with Keigo before. Perhaps that was why Haginosuke looked surprised and immediately added that he would go as well.

"I'll come too." Uekawa stood up, brushing imaginary dust off his pants. "Let's see what those children are doing."

The taunting was still in full swing as they headed out. Two boys and two girls surrounded a figure tall and broad enough to be a middle-schooler, half-hidden by a tree trunk.

"Is that a _student_?" Uekawa asked.

"I think I know him," Haginosuke said, and as they looked at him he added: "His name's Kabaji Munehiro. He's a fourth-year."

"Biggest fourth-year I've ever seen," Uekawa said. Keigo had to agree. But this wasn't the time to discuss matters of height. The four underclassmen hadn't noticed their approach, and they sounded angry.

"Why won't you talk to us, huh? Too stupid? Big fat stupid Kabaji."

"What if we hit you like this?" The sound of a fist striking a clothed torso. "Does that hurt?"

"It probably doesn't. What could hurt a lump like that?"

"I know! I bet even _he'll_ make some noise if we throw something hard at him." The taller of the two boys pointed at the ground. "Look at all the pebbles on the ground. We could--"

Keigo placed his right foot out and brought his heel down on a twig, so that it snapped in half with a cracking noise. A voice he hadn't known he possessed slid out, hard as ice: "Stop that right now."

"Huh?" The curly-haired girl was the first to turn around. "Atobe – Atobe-sama!"

Is that what they were using these days? Keigo was tempted to blush, except that he was at once aware of the flash in Uekawa's eyes, and Haginosuke's thoughtful look. Not to mention the four fourth-years staring at him in the sudden silence.

A cold breeze was blowing, and Keigo lifted a hand to brush his fringe away from his glasses. "What are your names and classes?" he asked, sounding far more assured than he felt.

The taller boy stuttered. The shorter boy couldn't speak for several seconds, as if his lips were frozen, and then shouted out his name so that it was carried away by the cool wind. The straight-haired girl stared at the ground and whispered her name. The girl with curly hair went pink and after saying her name, burst out: "I'm so sorry, Atobe-sama! I didn't mean to do it!"

Keigo looked at all four of them. "All right, then. You may leave." The look of shock on their faces didn't displease him. "If this happens again, I can promise you won't get off so lightly. Now _go_."

"Wouldn't it be better to report this?" said Uekawa, as the four children left, as quickly as one could short of running.

Keigo stared at their retreating backs for a second before glancing back at the treasurer. "Whatever. They won't do it again, anyway."

"How do you know?"

"I know," Keigo said.

"You're so arrogant." Uekawa was apparently giving up the guise of friendliness. "You're not student council president yet."

"I hate to interrupt this conversation," Haginosuke said, "but have you noticed that Kabaji has already left?"

Keigo flicked his gaze over at the oak tree where Kabaji had been standing moments ago. True enough, the monstrously large boy had disappeared, even though it seemed strange that such a massive person could simply walk off unnoticed by Keigo and Uekawa.

"You didn't stop him," Keigo said to Haginosuke. "I wanted to talk to him."

The wind had slowed down and was now gently tickling at their necks. Haginosuke shrugged. "You didn't ask me to."

#

Kabaji Munehiro reappeared a week later. He visited class 5C at the end of school, just as maths class was coming to a close. Keigo tolerated most school subjects, but there was little he could find likeable about statistics – not when it involved drawing histograms and manually counting averages for twenty baskets of apples. He was staring outside, blinking at the halo of the afternoon sun against the window frame, when a looming shadow passed across his field of vision. Keigo felt a little jolt of surprise. Was that--?

He took his time putting away his books as class was dismissed, keeping an eye on the door. Sure enough, after a minute the shadow appeared in the doorway, and Kabaji stepped into the classroom. Keigo had not seen his face clearly last week, under the shade of the oak tree, but no other elementary school student could be that tall.

"Oh, it's you. You certainly ran off pretty quickly last week. Why are you here?"

Kabaji held out his hands, and it was then that Keigo saw the wooden case he was holding, about the size of a shoebox and made of polished mahogany.

"For me?" Keigo examined the case, but made no move to take it.

"Yes."

Keigo saw that the students who hadn't left yet were giving them curious looks, Haginosuke among them. He turned away. "I didn't stop those students to do you a favour," he said. "I don't want it."

"Yes." Kabaji lowered his arms, and immediately began shuffling towards the exit. Keigo frowned.

"Wait," he called. Kabaji stopped and turned around. "I want to ask you something." Keigo walked up to the taller boy and stared hard at his face. "Tell me, when those children were bullying you, why didn't you fight back?"

Was Kabaji stupid, or simply a coward? As Keigo looked up at the broad face with its heavy brown tan, he somehow didn't think it was either.

"Because they weren't hurting me." Keigo's eyes widened as he heard the answer. Then he folded his arms across his chest.

"All right. I'll take your present." Kabaji held it out again, and Keigo waved it away. "But not now. I'm going on a fishing trip this Saturday. If you really want to thank me, then you can carry my equipment for me. After that, you can give it to me."

#

It was a grey day. The ground was soil-wet and fresh with the smell of trampled grass, while above in the sky, leftover rainclouds painted darkness across a sunset of purple and dull gold. The fading light spread reflections across the waters, which lapped at the weeds at the lake's edge.

Keigo reeled his line in, listening to the creaking noise of the fishing rod as he did so. Against the chirping of the cicadas, it was barely a sound at all. Once it was retrieved, and the fishless bait tucked away, he turned to Kabaji: "There. I think we should call it a day."

"Yes."

It was approximately a month since Keigo had first met Kabaji Munehiro.

Keigo sat back and watched while Kabaji took care of the fish they'd caught, the rods, and just about everything else. He felt a mild pang of guilt at leaving all the work to the other boy, but Kabaji was so _efficient_ at cleaning up that any attempt Keigo made to help would just slow things down. He seemed to excel at anything painstaking and simple, while Keigo was just the opposite.

"You know," Keigo said as they made their way back down the trail, "before this I always had to go fishing with either Father or Grandfather. Because they wouldn't let me go alone, and nobody wanted to go with me."

"Yes."

It wasn't true, exactly; plenty of people would have gone if Keigo had asked them, girls _or_ boys. But Haginosuke refused to go, and while Jirou might he'd probably have fallen asleep the moment he sat down. The lake would have to freeze in July before Keigo deigned to invite Shishido.

"Have you been fishing with your family before, Kabaji?" Keigo leaped off a tall ledge onto the wet path. Mud splattered across his brand-new hiking boots.

"Yes."

"I see. And what other hobbies do you have?"

"Making bottled ships."

"Bottled ships?" He turned in surprise. "You mean like the one you gave me?"

"Yes."

"That was a beautiful present." Even Grandmother had been impressed by it; the little replica of a Spanish Armada galleon, enclosed within copper-coloured glass.

Kabaji made no answer to that, so Keigo asked another question: "Do you have more bottled ships at home?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to see them. May I?" They had almost reached the road where Keigo's chauffeur was waiting; the trees had thinned out and the evening light flooded the trail. Keigo deftly avoided a glimmering puddle and spun on one heel to look inquiringly up at Kabaji.

"Yes."

Kabaji's parents seemed surprised to see Keigo, although since it was already the fourth Saturday that their son had come back with a bucket of freshly-caught fish it looked like they knew how to cook it, at the very least. While waiting for dinner to be served Kabaji led Keigo to the study, a small rectangular room filled with books and files and, as Kabaji flicked the light switch on, the glint of glass.

Keigo looked around in amazement at the shelves that lined the walls. "This is _wonderful_," he said. "Did you make all of these?"

Kabaji said no; his father had taught him the hobby. But the entire shelf of ships in the bottom left corner had been his work.

Keigo knelt in front of the indicated shelf and pulled out the first bottle. "You know," he said, "In Greek poetry there's a story about a woman so beautiful that her face launched a thousand ships. Kings from all across Greece sailed to Troy in order to defend her honour."

He held the bottle up to the light. It was plain but neat, with a sharp hull that looked as if it wanted to slice water. "Odysseus, I think," he murmured. "This is Odysseus' ship. It looks dangerous enough to be." He handed it to Kabaji, who put it back in place. Then Keigo reached for the next ship, which was dark and majestic with nearly a dozen masts. "Definitely Agamemnon. The king who was greater than all the others."

He went through the whole shelf, naming ships for Menelaus, Ajax, and even Paris and Hector though they hadn't been on ships but within walls. When he got to the last one he smiled. "And this is Achilles' ship. The first time I read about the Trojan War, I really wanted to be Achilles."

"Yes," said Kabaji.

#

"What sort of books do you like reading, Kabaji?" he asked, one afternoon in the library.

Keigo was becoming used to being the one doing all the talking. More than that though, he had learned how to ask the sort of question that forced Kabaji to answer in something more than monosyllables. This was useful when he grew sick of hearing the sound of his own voice, which happened more often than Grandmother believed.

I like books about science, Kabaji said. Especially physics.

"Science, huh?" Keigo pulled a cushion up and flopped back on the couch. It was behaviour that could get a student into trouble, but the librarians had been remarkably cheerful since Father sponsored the building of a new library wing last term.

He'd hoped to be able to have a conversation about books, but he had no interest in science. He recalled reading encyclopaedias about why the wind blew and how rainbows formed, back in first or second year when tennis and school council and everything else hadn't taken up so much time. But other than that...

There was nothing wrong with science, just like there was nothing wrong with French. It just didn't interest him.

Kabaji stood up. "Where are you going?" Keigo asked, more sharply than he'd intended.

Kabaji indicated that he was going to get a book. Keigo nodded, and after Kabaji had left he stood up himself and headed to the opposite side of the library, to where the folklore and mythology books were.

Haginosuke was there as he arrived. He was browsing through the section on Norse mythology, and had started growing his hair long again. "Keigo. We haven't talked in a while."

"We didn't see each other all summer," he agreed. "But I've been in class yesterday and today."

Haginosuke could have been angry or simply indifferent: it was getting harder and harder to tell with Haginosuke these days. "Seeing isn't talking," he said. "Jirou tells me you haven't been playing with him much, recently."

Keigo shrugged. "Tournaments are getting more intense, and I'm supposed to take time off to rest. I can't just play for fun the way I used to."

"So intense you can't talk to any of your old friends, apparently."

Keigo's returning look was as cool as Haginosuke's had been. "What are you trying to say?"

Haginosuke stepped forward and clasped Keigo's left shoulder with one hand. Keigo felt as if the rows of books on either side were closing in on him. "Tell me," Haginosuke said in that soft voice – Keigo had never thought about how much it reminded him of spider-silk - "about that Kabaji. Who seems like your best friend these days. Why is that? Does he give you presents? Is it because he does what you tell him to do?"

Keigo wrenched himself out of the other boy's grasp and glared. "Is that the sort of person you think he is? That you think _I_ am?"

Haginosuke glanced back at Keigo and his shoulders seemed to droop. "I don't know anymore, Atobe."

And he turned and disappeared among the bookshelves. Keigo wanted to call him back, but his mouth wouldn't open and his heart refused to feel sad, and somewhere in his mind he was thinking, _were you my best friend once?_ And the answer came almost immediately, _I don't know if you were, but you no longer are._


	7. Part 7

The cherry blossoms were late that spring, the sunlight pale and slanting; as Keigo travelled through his familiar routines from school to tennis practice to homework and back, he began to notice how inconvenient his glasses were.

Up till now they had never been in Keigo's way. Usually he barely noticed them, except on humid days when the air-conditioning would fog up his lenses as he stepped into the classroom. The thin gold frames matched the lenses for price and quality, and never came askew – at least not until that April weekend, only his second competition for the year.

The tournament was held in the centre of Osaka; as Keigo played he could hear the whine of city traffic coming from beyond the courts. It was during the tenth game of the final round, playing against a tall slender boy called Shiraishi Kuranosuke, that Atobe darted forward to return a serve, and his glasses wobbled.

"Fifteen-love," called the referee.

While they were changing courts, Atobe pulled the frames back into place. They felt narrow and inconvenient against the backs of his ears, and there was a smudge of distorted vision on the right lens he could have sworn hadn't been there before.

He won the next point, and moved to the net to attack. He was about to finish the game with a smash when his opponent slammed a drive volley back at him. Keigo moved back, startled. The impact of the ball knocked his glasses out of position again.

Shiraishi won the tournament.

When Keigo returned to the bench, the coach didn't look angry, just disappointed. "He's a good player, but you're better."

"It was the _glasses_," Atobe ground out. "They won't stay on."

"It's not like you to make excuses for your game, Keigo."

Keigo threw his racquet into its bag and wrenched the zip shut. He took out his water bottle and twisted the cap off before lifting the bottle to his mouth. His lips tasted of salt. He drank so quickly that the water spilled down his neck and soaked the collar of his polo shirt.

After he was done he tossed the bottle into a nearby bin. "It won't happen again," he said. As he stared down at his coach, the wind began to cool the sweat on his skin. The whistle it made as it blew reminded Atobe of the simmering of an iron kettle, perched on a gas stove.

#

There was a new boy in Keigo's class this year. It wasn't unusual in itself, new students coming to Hyoutei, but this boy came with the rude, colourful accent of Osaka Prefecture, and Keigo was unpleasantly reminded of losing the last tournament every time he heard Oshitari Yuushi's voice.

This happened quite often because Oshitari talked too much. He was taller than Keigo, with a high-bridged nose and narrow, intelligent eyes. His hair was long and frequently windswept. He seemed to be one of those people who were effortlessly good-looking.

That same lack of effort accompanied most of Oshitari's class activities, with varying results; Oshitari wasn't _bad_ at languages or music – he certainly showed more aptitude for the latter than Keigo did – but neither was he anywhere near the top. It was a shortcoming he overcompensated for during maths and science. Oshitari did algebra while the rest of the class did multiplication, and during pop quizzes, it was Oshitari who knew the allotropes of carbon and named Jupiter's moons.

When Keigo heard during the second week of school that Oshitari played tennis as well, he decided that the best response would be to ignore him.

"Afraid of losing, Atobe?" Shishido asked. "I hear Oshitari's won nearly as many tournaments as you have."

Atobe stretched his arms outwards – it had been a long day at school – before bringing his palms to rest on top of Shishido's desk. "If he's any good, I'll meet him in a competition sooner or later. If he's not, why should I bother?"

The school bell had rung, and the classroom was filled with the sound of retreating footsteps. Almost intuitively, Atobe turned to look at the desk several rows away (but still within earshot) where Oshitari Yuushi was sitting, his chin resting on a propped elbow. He was watching their conversation with a speculative gaze – a gaze that was interrupted when he saw Keigo staring at him.

Their eyes met for a second, and Oshitari smiled. Atobe turned aside and looked at the doorway; Kabaji's arrival at that moment provided a convenient change of topic.

"Kabaji. I was hoping you would come. This morning I forgot to pick up the information sheets about the upcoming school games; would you mind getting them from Serikawa-sensei and bringing them to the meeting room?"

"Yes."

"Thank you." Kabaji left the room again, and Atobe returned to his desk, where he uncapped his fountain pen while glancing through the agenda for today's council meeting. There was a great deal to be done. It was only their second one for the year, and the first one had mainly been spent introducing the various class monitors.

Kabaji had been elected monitor, much to everyone's surprise including Atobe's. "Looks like some of your aura rubbed off," Haginosuke had commented, when the list of school council members was released.

"_Is it because he does what you tell him to do?"_

Keigo looked down; blinked. Without noticing it, he'd involuntarily drawn a jagged line in black ink right across the page. He scowled and tucked the agenda away in his clipboard. Two minutes later he was walking across the central courtyard towards the hall that student council used for meetings, headphones from his disc player jammed in his ears.

#

The highlight of student council that year was organising the School Games; a week-long series of races and sporting events that replaced the usual Sports Day. It meant an abnormal amount of work for the student body president, and as the weeks passed Atobe found his hours taken up by a never-ending series of to-do lists: flyers to be printed and phone calls to be made, announcements and notices to be given out at school assembly. His mirror was soon covered with dozens of fluorescent yellow Post-It notes; Mother noticed this towards the end of spring and transferred them to a miniature whiteboard which she'd bought for him.

When Keigo discovered this upon coming home from school, he lost his temper. "You put them all in the wrong _order_," he said. "They were supposed to be sorted by date."

"Did I?" Mother stood in the doorway, left hand resting against the frame. "I'm very sorry, dear. Would you like me to put them back in the right place?"

"No, thanks. I'll do it myself." He ripped the first Post-It note off the board and stuck it on his finger. A scribbled sentence on it caught his eye. "Ah! I forgot to ask Serikawa-sensei about the draw for the soccer matches. I'll have to call his home number. Mother, could you get the school directory for me?"

"Of course. Just ask if you need any help." Mother pursed her lips. "I think this is getting to be too much work for you anyway. Managing all these events – they ought to wait until junior high before making you do this kind of thing."

Keigo pressed his knuckles into the whiteboard; it chafed against the wallpaper and made a scraping noise. "I am," he gritted his teeth as he spoke, "not a child."

"Very well, dear." Mother looked resigned. "By the way, I noticed that there'll be a tennis tournament during that Games Week of yours. Are you planning to take part?"

Keigo frowned as he replied, "No; I'm not."

But when a fifth-year monitor called Ootori Choutarou asked him the same question later that week, his response was more equivocal. "I haven't made up my mind yet."

"You can't _not_ participate," said the vice-president, a slim girl who wore her hair in three braids. "We hardly ever get a chance to see you play. Everyone's looking forward to seeing you on the courts."

"Would it be a fair competition?" Atobe asked.

She smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "Oh, get over yourself! There are plenty of good players in our school. Ootori-kun's taking part as well, aren't you?" She turned to the younger boy.

"Ahh. Yes, that's right." The silver-haired boy blushed. Keigo suspected that Ootori blushed even when he wasn't really embarrassed. It didn't seem to hurt his popularity; most girls thought it was cute. Ootori was a favourite to be student council president next year – though Keigo thought he would most likely end up as vice-president. "Actually, I was hoping to play a match against you, Atobe-sempai."

Atobe glanced out the window opposite, where he could see Serikawa-sensei approaching from the central courtyard. "Is that so? I guess it wouldn't do to disappoint you."

#

As it turned out, there was no opportunity to play against Ootori at the School Games. The soft-spoken boy lost his semifinal match, and lost badly, to Oshitari Yuushi.

Shishido swore softly as Oshitari finished the last point with a drop shot. "I knew that Oshitari was good – but that Choutarou isn't bad either. I thought he was at Taki's level."

"Ootori _is_ as good as Haginosuke," Keigo said, watching the courts with narrowed eyes. "But Oshitari's a few levels better. All his basic skills are perfect." The words seemed to jog a memory, and his brow furrowed. _Flawless tennis... _

Shishido's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Looks like you're up next."

Keigo rolled his eyes. "No need to _tell_ me." He grabbed his racquet and amid an outburst of screams and applause, walked over to the net where Oshitari was waiting.

"Atobe Keigo. I've been looking forward to this," Oshitari said. His voice was low and languid; by the time he was fifteen it would be a rich baritone. "And smooth, by the way."

"Just so you know," Atobe said as he placed the head of his racquet on the ground and spun. "I'm taking this match."

The racquet landed smooth, and it took Keigo twenty minutes to win the tournament.

"Those glasses of yours seem to be in the way," Oshitari commented as they shook hands at the finish.

"Defeat me, and I'll listen to your advice," said Atobe. "In the meantime, keep your analysis of my game to yourself."

That Saturday, he was discussing footwork with his coach when he casually changed the topic: "Incidentally, I haven't seen Fuji Syuusuke in a long time. Do you know what he's been doing lately?"

The coach grunted. "Fuji Syuusuke? The rumours are that he's stopped playing tournaments; I don't know what the reason is. Why are you asking?"

Atobe shrugged. "Just curious. It's a shame I couldn't defeat him before he quit."

"Humph. Maybe it's just as well you didn't play him again. He might have let you win."

#

Oshitari was laid-back and concentrated on finesse and strategy at the expense of power and fitness, but he never intentionally let his opponent win, nor did he ever play at less than his best. Atobe gradually discovered these things over the course of autumn, as the two of them continued to play tennis matches with Jirou and Shishido. Kabaji was a frequent spectator at those games, and sometimes joined in – but he'd never had lessons before, and it was impossible (or boring, rather) to play a serious match with him.

In September Keigo invited Haginosuke to join their practices, but the boy declined. "Too much homework these days, I'm afraid," he said apologetically. "I'd love to join you, but there's just not enough time."

Haginosuke seemed to have enough time to play soccer and read Aristophanes, but Keigo didn't say anything. Keigo hadn't been been studying much Greek lately; in fact, he hadn't spoken to his old second-grade form teacher in nearly a year. His grades in German were still excellent, but he wasn't improving the way he used to. Two of the students in his class, a pale-skinned skinny girl and a stout, spiky-haired boy, were rapidly catching up to his level of fluency.

It was in December that Oshitari finally defeated Atobe in a match: 7-6, with a tie-break of 13-11.

"Told you your glasses were holding you back," he said, holding the ball lazily in one hand. They were playing at the indoor courts at the local country club, two streets away from Oshitari's home.

Keigo grimaced. Oshitari's Kansai dialect always showed up more when he was tired or overemotional.

"It didn't stop me from winning the last seven matches, did it?" he said, wiping his face with a towel.

"Defeat is a defeat. You said you'd listen to me." Oshitari took a sip of water. "And it's natural that you'd win more matches than I do - after all, you train more and play more. It's the scientific conclusion."

Science again. Atobe picked up his things. "Science alone won't bring you success in tennis," he said. "It's not as if we study physics to learn how to serve a ball."

"Of course. But you can't deny that everything ultimately obeys the laws of physics." Oshitari smiled. "Even you."

#

A week later he was sitting cross-legged on his bed when a knock came on his door. "Keigo, dear? It's Mother."

Keigo kept the magazine he was reading clasped in one hand while he went over to answer the door. "Hello, Mother. What is it?"

"I'm planning to head into the city this afternoon to do some Christmas shopping. Would you like to come along? I know you've been talking about getting a new racquet lately."

"Sure, that would be great. Are we leaving now?"

"As soon as I find your Grandmother and tell her we're going out. Oh," she glanced at Keigo, who had stepped out of his room and shut the door behind him, "were you planning to take that along with you?"

"This?" Keigo held out his copy of _Pro Tennis Monthly_'s December issue. "It belongs to Father. I'll put it back in the cabinet on our way out."

"Is that so? Very well, then. Wait a minute – isn't this the magazine that your coach said you were featured in? The article for which that reporter called you a few months ago?"

Keigo snorted. "It's not about _me_, Mother. It's an feature on elementary school tennis players, and all there is about me is a tiny paragraph. Here, I'll show you." He flipped to the right page, a glossy red and blue article spanning almost six pages.

"It's not a tiny paragraph at all, dear; it's nearly six lines long. And there's a photograph as well!" Mother's nose wrinkled. "But it's not a very good photo; the colour is terribly washed-out. And they made your glasses look so prominent."

Keigo tapped his foot impatiently. It seemed as if everyone was talking about his glasses lately.

Mother was still reading. "This looks so interesting, dear. I had no idea there were so many talented young players in this country. Especially this boy. Tezuka--"

"Tezuka Kunimitsu," Keigo said. "They say he's the best elementary school player in Japan."

"What a good-looking boy. And his glasses are almost the same style as yours. Of course," she added, "they're not half as attractive as yours."

"Mother," Keigo said, "Are we leaving soon?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" She gave the magazine back to him. "We should get going, of course. You need plenty of time to choose a good racquet."

Keigo, who'd already started making his way down the corridor, turned to face her as he spoke. "Actually, I've changed my mind. Can we visit the optometrist instead?"

#

Due to a traffic jam, he came late to school that morning. The whispers started the moment he arrived. It was the teacher who came to the doorway and noticed first.

"Atobe-kun? You're very late today." She looked at his face and drew back in surprise. "That's an interesting change; you look very different. I think they suit you very well."

Atobe bowed his head. "Sorry for being late. I've already left an explanatory note with the principal's office."

He went to his desk and sat down, but not before looking at Oshitari Yuushi straight in the eye.

The murmurs intensified, and the moment they had their first break, his desk was instantly surrounded by chattering students.

"You look so _cuuuute_," said a girl wearing barrettes. Her opinion was promptly echoed by several other girls.

"You look like you have some kind of eye disease," Shishido said. He was sitting on a nearby desk, on the other side of the crowd. Atobe had to arch his neck before he could see him.

There was a minor torrent of female protest following Shishido's comment. "He does not!"

"I think Atobe-kun looks beautiful!"

"Blue is definitely his perfect colour!"

"In the eyes of your fans, I think you would look perfect even with orange eyes," Oshitari said halfway through lunchtime, just when Keigo was wondering whether climbing a tree would gain him ten minutes of peace. "Although what made you finally decide to get contact lenses?"

"Didn't you say that even I have to obey the laws of physics? I'm going to stand at the top." Atobe glanced at Oshitari, who looked confused. "No matter what it takes to get there."


	8. Part 8

Hyoutei Academy Middle School was far larger than Hyoutei Elementary had been. Last year's sixth-years, who'd graduated from elementary school together with Atobe, only made up half of the current batch of first-years. It was easy to spot the students who were new to Hyoutei, as they were not only unfamiliar to Atobe but also had a distinctly bewildered look on their faces. Atobe memorised the names of those who were in his class, and ignored the rest – except for the occasional interesting student.

Mukahi Gakuto was one of the interesting ones. Atobe spotted him at lunchtime, a skinny boy with fierce eyebrows and an upturned nose. He was turning cartwheels on top of a narrow brick wall, fifteen or sixteen bystanders watching him as he did.

"...who's that?" someone whispered.

"One of the new first-years. His name's Mukahi Gakuto. I hear he does competitive acrobatics."

"Not bad. Do you think he'd join the gymnastics club?"

After a few minutes Mukahi grew tired of doing cartwheels and did a back flip before landing on the ground, surrounded by an outburst of applause.

"That was awesome," said a first-year with short, spiky hair and a rumpled uniform. "You're sure to get into the gymnastics team, if you're this good."

Mukahi sat cross-legged on a nearby bench. His thin, athletic arms rested on his lap. "I'm not joining the gymnastics club."

A few people made noises of surprise. "Why not?" asked a second-year girl.

He shrugged. "I want to play tennis."

The girl frowned. "Haven't you heard about the tennis club? It's the most popular club; everybody joins. It's impossible to get onto the regulars. If you joined gymnastics you'd be a school representative for sure."

"That's why I want to join the tennis club. Being at the top there actually means something."

"But what if you don't make it? Your talent would be wasted there."

Atobe had seen enough. He turned around and began to walk away. An older girl spotted him as he did. "Atobe-kun! Haven't seen you in a while – Atobe-kun?"

Atobe ignored her and kept walking, oblivious to the murmurs that had started among the crowd.

"Who's that?" Mukahi asked in his bright, piercing voice, just as Atobe rounded the corner.

"Atobe Keigo. He's a first-year and a nationally ranked tennis player. You'd better watch out, Mukahi, he can make life pretty miserable for people he doesn't like."

Mukahi made a sound of disgust. "I'm not scared."

Atobe was too far away to hear the conversation now. He walked past the club rooms and towards the central part of the school, and as he approached the sports complex, he was smiling.

#

Oshitari was the first person he met at tennis practice. Atobe opened his mouth to greet him and did a double take.

"Well? Do they look good?" Oshitari asked.

Atobe gave Oshitari's silver-framed glasses a critical glance and said: "I didn't know you were myopic."

"There's a lot of things you don't know about me."

Atobe looked around the tennis courts, and the two hundred-odd students gathered there, including at least ninety freshmen. "There's a lot of things I don't want to know about you."

The atmosphere at Hyoutei's tennis club seemed friendly. There were girls as well as boys in the club, and they were gathered in groups of various sizes, talking amongst themselves. The air was filled with chatter and laughter. But everyone fell silent the moment the coach arrived.

The first thing Atobe noticed was that Sakaki Tarou was blond-haired and fierce and impressive-looking. The second thing he noticed was the tie, expensive and made from green satin.

Sakaki stepped into the centre and, in a few sentences, told everyone what was going to happen. The second and third-years would start practising straight away. The first-years would first do warm-up exercises and then separate into groups based on ability and tennis experience. Those who had been playing for a long time would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

"Do you play tennis?" Atobe asked loudly, when it came to his turn. He looked pointedly at Sakaki's perfectly-tailored suit, more suited to the music room than the tennis courts. All around them, people began to point and whisper.

Sakaki showed no visible reaction. He spoke in a resonant, perfectly controlled voice. "Your name is Atobe, right? When you've proved yourself a true member of this club, then I'll play a match with you."

For a moment Atobe was seven years old again, but not quite. He nodded, slowly, and backed down.

The whispers intensified.

#

The first time Atobe used 'ore-sama' around Sakaki, the teacher arched a golden eyebrow, kept his arms folded across his chest, and said nothing.

#

Atobe threw the ball he was holding on the ground in disgust. "You don't _need_ to wear those," he said, absolutely certain now.

"But they look good, don't you think?" Oshitari was slightly out of breath, his hair rumpled and damp with sweat. "What was the score, by the way?"

"4-2 and 30-love. You're losing badly."

"Am I?" Oshitari's voice was indifferent. Atobe noted with irritation that his glasses were not askew at all.

He leaned back and cast the ball in the air to serve. The ball went across in a a perfect diagonal, spinning heavily. It was a beautiful serve. Atobe ran to the net.

Whether through carelessness or lack of power, Oshitari lobbed the ball. Atobe leaped up at once to smash it. When he landed on the ground again, he noted with a sudden sense of alarm that Oshitari was already moving, answering the smash with a swoop of his racquet.

Atobe turned to look as the ball formed a sharp arc in the air, dropped right onto the baseline, and bounced.

"What do you think?" asked Oshitari, coming up to the net. "I call it, 'Strategy for Dealing with Atobe Keigo's Inconvenient Smash.'"

Atobe walked to the end of the court to pick up the ball. "While I'm flattered that my smash frustrates you so much, I think you had better come up with a better name for that technique."

Whatever Oshitari had been going to say to that was interrupted by the sound of a student shouting. "Hey, you! Freshmen aren't supposed to be using these courts at this time."

Two boys had entered the court area, followed by seven or eight other students wearing tennis club jerseys.

"Third-year regulars," Oshitari said softly. "This could be trouble."

Atobe watched the group of students as they approached. Several boys were carrying racquets, and most of them were dressed in PE uniform, which meant that they intended to have a game; they weren't trying to chase him and Oshitari off the courts just for the sake of it.

Not that it excused their behaviour.

"Well, well," said the stockier boy, as he approached. "What do we have here. Atobe Keigo, and one of his little cronies."

Atobe noticed that he was covering his mouth with his left hand, with his fingers between his eyes. It was a bad habit of his. Before he'd always adjusted his glasses when he wanted a better look at something, and now his hand automatically went to his face, even though it was a redundant gesture.

He let his hand fall, and looked back at the two regulars. "Watanabe. Ito." He deliberately omitted the _sempai_ suffix. "What a pleasant surprise. I have something to say to both of you."

"Oh, really?" Ito stepped forward. He was taller and more muscular than Watanabe - over six feet tall and probably twice Atobe's weight. "And what would that be?"

Atobe let his voice become soft and very low. "Get out of here. Unless either of you would like to play a set with me?"

It was a calculated gamble. He wasn't sure he could defeat either of them at this stage – they were both power players and had the strength and build of grown men, whereas Atobe had yet to begin his growth spurt.

But he had nothing to lose from a defeat, whereas they had everything to lose. Watanabe evidently thought the chance of teaching Atobe a lesson wasn't worth the risk of losing his position on the regulars. He clapped Ito on the shoulder. "Forget it. He'd just try something else if we beat him up. Let's go to the courts opposite, they're less contaminated anyway."

The two of them began to walk away, their followers trudging after them. But Watanabe wasn't satisfied with leaving it at that. "Don't get so cocky just because the coach likes you, Atobe," he called over his shoulder. "You'll never be captain if you don't have the skills to back up your talk."

"What a cheerful fellow," Oshitari commented, as they watched him leave. "Do you suppose he's worried about the Kantou regionals?"

Atobe shrugged. He moved to the baseline and prepared to serve again. "If he's nervous about losing, then he doesn't deserve his position in the team."

"I suppose you're right. Also, Atobe."

"Yes?"

"I am not one of your cronies."

#

During summer vacation, he talked to Kabaji for the first time in months. The younger boy said over the phone that he was taking tennis lessons.

When Atobe heard this, he went out to the garage and ordered the chauffeur to fetch Kabaji to their home. After the younger boy arrived, they went out to the courts and played tennis for two hours. They played three sets in a row, and Atobe won 6-3, 7-5, 6-2.

"You need to get stronger," he ordered, after they'd collapsed on the nearby deck chairs and were helping themselves to glasses of sparkling grape juice.

"I will," said Kabaji.

#

Atobe won the Newcomer Tournament in September, after an interesting but unchallenging series of matches. He met Fuji Syuusuke in the quarter-finals and defeated him 6-4 – although there was always the nagging feeling, prompted by what his coach had said about Fuji last year, that Fuji was holding something back. The tennis was as beautiful as ever, this time accentuated by a series of spins and strokes even Oshitari would have difficulty matching, and when Fuji returned Atobe's slice shot by sending the ball to midcourt, where it spun crazily and refused to bounce back up, Atobe knew that Fuji was every bit as dangerous as he had been when they were both seven years old.

"Why is Jirou so awake?" Atobe asked, watching the blonde player leaping up and down after the awards ceremony was over.

Shishido shrugged. "It was some player from Rikkai. A really good player, according to Gakuto. Apparently he volleys even better than Jirou."

Jirou spotted Atobe and bounced right up. "Hey Atobe, awesome job! Congratulations on winning the tournament."

Atobe smiled. "Thanks, Jirou. You didn't do too badly either."

"No way! I lost terribly to Marui-kun. Arrgh, I'm so angry about that, but I'll definitely win next time!"

Jirou didn't seem angry at all. He continued bouncing around and talked to everyone who would listen to him about Rikkai's Marui Bunta and his _incredible_ volley skills.

Shishido nodded at Atobe. "You don't look too happy about winning the tournament. What happened?"

"None of your business," Atobe said. He went over to where Sakaki was sitting. Sakaki had a reputation for being inscrutable among the student population, but he was actually fairly easy to read if you paid attention, which Atobe did.

Right now Sakaki was in a good mood. He had that muted, calculating look in his eyes that he wore when he had something up his sleeve. "You performed very well, as I expected. Although I sense that you wish your opponents had been more challenging." "

Atobe shrugged. "I played the way I always do."

"I see," Sakaki said. He looked over to the left, where a troop of boys clad in yellow were standing. "Rikkai's players did excellently as usual. But the Newcomer Tournament was only a sideshow for them. Their strongest first-years were all part of the team that won Nationals last month."

Atobe turned to watch the Rikkai players as they exited the stadium two by two. His gaze was first caught by the boy in front, who had startling blue hair and a soft smile. But then he turned his head and saw a tall, stern-looking boy at the back of the line, wearing a black baseball cap that had been adjusted into military-accurate position. "Ah. Is that so?"


	9. Part 9

The Atobe Keigo fan club was founded in April. Atobe first heard of it during the week before district preliminaries, on a bright Wednesday afternoon with a wind that made fences creak and lashed across the tennis courts to tangle Oshitari's hair.

Oshitari was currently winning against Mukahi Gakuto, 4-3. Next to them, Taki Haginosuke and Shishido Ryou had just started a match. Sakaki sat on his usual bench and watched them, occasionally issuing orders to the rest of the club members.

There was a glowering, immanent sense of tension on the courts that day. Sakaki had not yet announced the list of pre-regulars who would represent Hyoutei at the preliminaries, and while today's practice matches officially had nothing to do with the player selection, everyone was aware of the club policy – _losers would not be tolerated_. No one understood this better than the regulars, who fought a constant series of battles to maintain their positions. Since joining the team last fall, Atobe had been challenged to a match at least once every week.

Haginosuke had said last year that being a Hyoutei regular was like walking a tightrope. Atobe agreed with the comparison – provided that the tennis player was an acrobat; experienced, well-equipped, and with the necessary psychological mettle to stay on the rope.

Atobe wasn't sure about Haginosuke's psychological mettle, although his experience and ability weren't in question. Even two years after he'd quit competitive tennis, Haginosuke held his own among Hyoutei's best – he was _the_ best of the pre-regulars except for Oshitari, which was an unpleasant surprise for Gakuto and Shishido, who'd expected to be leading the pre-regulars this year. Gakuto had never seen Haginosuke play before this year, and for Shishido it was just the latest in a long string of losses to the soft-spoken player.

Nobody knew why Haginosuke had quit the Languages Club and started playing tennis again, and Atobe was reluctant to ask. He was used to being able to read people's motives without asking for them, but there was something guarded about Haginosuke whenever Atobe was around, a defence so old and deeply entrenched that Atobe couldn't see past it. Or perhaps he didn't want to see past it.

Haginosuke finished the third game with a drop volley. Shishido scowled and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear; the wind continued to ruffle his ponytail, unperturbed. Atobe shook his head and looked over at the furthest court, where the best of the first-years was playing: tall, silver-haired Ootori, with his powerful serve and deep, forceful shots.

Ootori's opponent was one of the better players among this year's rookies, although Atobe found little to admire about Hiyoshi Wakashi's tennis. It was too stiff, too deliberate – much like Hiyoshi himself, although there was an undercurrent of aggression to his playing that appealed to Atobe. Hiyoshi showed a grinding, obstinate determination to play that would earn him a spot on the regulars eventually, if he didn't give up. But beyond the occasional flicker of danger that manifested itself in a volley, a cross-court shot, Hiyoshi's tennis failed to amaze. It had nothing of Ootori's self-possessed strength or Gakuto's exuberant leaps - it was not _interesting_, as Oshitari would say.

Atobe decided that Hiyoshi's tennis was like an ill-fitting set of clothes; bulky and awkward to move in, revealing little of the person within.

"Watching Hiyoshi Wakashi?" Sakaki asked. Atobe turned around to look at the golden-haired coach, who was seated on his usual bench while observing the practice matches.

Atobe nodded. "Yes."

"A promising player," said Sakaki. "He's similar to you in many ways."

The statement was so unexpected that Atobe nearly let out a yelp of protest. He bit on his lip and tried to sound composed. "Really?" he said, keeping his eyes trained on the courts. "I hadn't noticed."

Sakaki made no reply to that, and Atobe concentrated on watching Gakuto struggle to return Oshitari's balls. Gakuto's lack of stamina was well-known among the club; it was the fatal weakness in what was otherwise one of Hyoutei's fiercest and most effective playing styles. To exploit that weakness, however, you had to be skilled enough to hold up against Gakuto's initial attacks.

Oshitari was good enough to defeat Gakuto every time they played, which made it strange that he played against the small, belligerent boy so often. Or perhaps it wasn't so strange – the two of them played often because they were _friends_, which was the stranger fact. There hardly seemed to be two personalities in the club more unalike than Oshitari and Gakuto, unless it were Shishido and Haginosuke. Or perhaps, himself and Kabaji.

"Atobe-sama!" He turned, startled out of his reverie. A group of girls appeared on the eastern side of the courts. They were walking towards where Atobe was standing, flanked by curious onlookers in every direction.

Atobe recognised the pretty, curly-haired girl in front; she was a former classmate of his. Possibly the one who had transformed his locker into a veritable bower of pink last Valentine's Day.

"Atobe-sama." - she was out of breath by the time she reached him - "we've been looking for you the whole day!"

Atobe glanced around. All the practice matches had halted, and even the first-years on the other side had stopped doing their stretches. Sakaki had not moved from his seat and was watching calmly – but Atobe knew that if he didn't resolve this situation soon, there would be unpleasant consequences. "We're having practice, Mariko. Was there something so important that it couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

"Well," she thrust a pen and a sheet of paper into his hands, "we finally got the school council to approve the fan club, and the secretary said we had to get permission from you, and so we looked for you the whole day but you weren't in any of the usual places, and – can you please sign this?"

Shishido's snort of amusement was audible even from the other end of the court. Atobe looked at the proffered sheet, which was headed "On the Formation of a Fan Club for Atobe Keigo," and tried to check the information on the document while ignoring the stares of two hundred players – didn't people _know_ by now to leave this sort of thing in his locker, or hand it to Kabaji?

He was doing a remarkably successful job of maintaining his composure until Haginosuke's soft, cool voice cut through the silence. "A fan club for Atobe? How interesting. Where do I sign-up?"

Laughter, followed by Oshitari speaking. "I completely agree with Taki; I'm tempted to join as well. Although I'd hate to give you the wrong impression, Atobe."

Atobe gritted his teeth. "Haginosuke. Oshitari. Start minding your own business and get back to your matches." He handed the sheet back to Mariko. "Sorry, but can you give this to me tomorrow? I don't have the time right now. Or if you drop this in my locker, I can have it back to you by lunchtime."

Mariko and the girls looked crestfallen, but complied. "Whatever you say, Atobe-sama," she said. Looking at Sakaki and the tennis players rather nervously, they began making their way back in the direction they'd come from.

"That was rather unexpected," Sakaki said, the moment the girls turned their backs.

He bowed his head. "I apologise for interrupting practice time with personal affairs."

"Is that so?" Sakaki looked up at him. "I recall I haven't assessed your aerobic fitness since the school year began. Now would be a good time to do so."

Atobe stretched his arms outwards. "Twenty-five laps?"

"That would be sufficient."

As Atobe jogged around the circumference of the courts, fragmented pieces of conversation made their way to his ears:

"Wish _I_ had that sort of popularity with girls."

"...did you see the way he told off Oshitari and Taki?"

"...definitely next year's captain."

Atobe allowed himself to feel a touch flattered - amidst an overwhelming sense of irritation with the world in general and irresponsible Hyoutei pre-regulars in particular, and the _thud-thud-thud_ of blood pounding through his veins.

#

Tokyo prefectural finals. Atobe remembered standing here with the other pre-regulars last year, hands pressed to the fence as they watched Hyoutei defeat Seidai Koizumi in a quick, disappointing four sets. Back then the atmosphere had been much the same as it was now, dominated by the rhythmic chanting of three hundred (the cheerleading squad had turned out in full force today) students in Hyoutei uniform:

"The winner will be Hyoutei!"  
"The loser will be Seigaku!"  
"Hyoutei, Hyoutei!"  
"The loser will be Seigaku!"

"It's the first time Seigaku's reached Prefectural finals in five years," said Sato – the current Hyoutei captain, a tall handsome boy with a cruel twist to his lips.

"Indeed." Sakaki inclined his head. "Seigaku's team this year is considerably stronger than it used to be."

"Because of Tezuka Kunimitsu." Sakaki and Sato looked up at the sound of Atobe's voice. "Isn't that right, coach?"

"Tezuka?" Sato's voice was sharp. "Isn't that the junior player who's gone undefeated for fifteen months?"

Atobe nodded. "Not since he finished elementary school." _Not since we finished elementary school,_ he thought, remembering that Tezuka Kunimitsu was the same age as he was – three days younger, in fact, if the _Pro Tennis Monthly_ article was correct.

He looked across at the other side of the courts, where Tezuka Kunimitsu was leaning down to tie his shoelaces – a serious-faced, bespectacled boy, with a distinct skinniness to his limbs that came from growing too fast too soon. If he felt either excitement or trepidation at the prospect of playing Hyoutei Gakuen – three-time defending champion of the Tokyo Prefectural Tournament – Atobe was unable to read it in his face.

"He doesn't look like much," Sato said dispassionately. "Will he be playing Singles Two or Singles One?"

"I expected Seigaku to frontload their line-up, and planned accordingly," Sakaki said. "You will be facing Tezuka in Singles Two. Atobe will be playing Singles Three."

Atobe's nails were digging into his palm. "Sakaki-sensei..."

Sakaki raised an eyebrow. "What is it, Atobe?"

Atobe looked at the anticipatory grin Sato was wearing. "Nothing," he said, turning away.

He'd defeat Tezuka, or surpass him, one of these days. There was nothing Sato could do to stop that.

Hyoutei won Doubles 2 handily, Jirou and his third-year partner making short work of a nervous-looking pair who had excellent footwork but lacked the coordination to back it up. They lost Doubles 1 – barely – to two second-years named Kikumaru and Oishi. Atobe had little interest in doubles, but there was a balanced sense of _rightness_ about the way Seigaku's Doubles 1 pair played, the ingenious solidity of Oishi's defensive play while Kikumaru twirled and leaped at the net. It was not unlike watching Oshitari and Gakuto play, and Atobe was unsurprised when, glancing at the sidelines, he saw Gakuto's mouth clench together in a tight, determined line.

Hiyoshi Wakashi was standing next to Gakuto and Oshitari. He was staring at the players on the court with his usual intense, unnerving gaze.

_Gekokujou again, I presume?_ Knowing Hiyoshi, the first-year was already outlining tactics in his head, coming up with ways for the match to be won or lost. It was a useful exercise – but one that simply highlighted the differences between Hiyoshi and himself. Atobe was good at strategic planning, but he was equally good at adapting to the moment. Sometimes when playing Hiyoshi, Atobe felt as if he were encountering a charade, responding to a series of carefully calculated steps.

_But aren't you like that sometimes?_ - he brushed the thought aside. Even if it were true, Sakaki's belief in their similarities was still unfounded. Whatever faults could be found with Atobe's tennis (and he was confident that there weren't many), Hiyoshi's marked lack of personality was not one of them.

He raised his right arm in the air and snapped his fingers as he stepped out onto the courts.

"_Hyoutei, Hyoutei! Atobe! Atobe!"_

The cheering seemed to wash over him as he approached the net. He smirked and shook hands with Seigaku's captain.

_Are you watching, Tezuka_?

When it was over he collapsed on the bench, took the towel that Kabaji offered. "Good job," said Sakaki, and the sentiment was echoed by Jirou and the pre-regulars and even Sato.

Atobe ignored the compliments and the bevy of girls in the corner who looked as if they wanted to come up and congratulate him. His heartbeat was still singing, furious and unsatisfied.

It had not been the match he wanted to play.

Tezuka Kunimitsu stood up. The noise of three hundred students dimmed and ground to a halt.

"Hey Yuushi, who's this guy?" Gakuto asked. "Check out the look on Seigaku's faces. They think they're actually going to beat Sato."

Atobe whipped his head around. "Tezuka Kunimitsu, don't you _know_? Idiot." He caught the surprised look on Oshitari's face and tried to calm himself down. "You don't often get to see players like him. Pay attention to this match, Kabaji."

"Yes," Kabaji said.

#

Few schools in Japan could match or surpass the aura that Hyoutei's tennis club produced when its members turned up _en masse_, but Kanagawa's Rikkaidai Fuzoku was notably one of them. At the very least, Atobe thought, observing the rows of players lining the stands, the colour of their uniforms was capable of sending an opponent blind.

Sato – who was still not permitted to play, but didn't allow small details like that to affect his captainly duties - was giving today's players the run-down on the opposition. "It's a standard Rikkai line-up – they've arranged their players according to true strength. Remember to be on guard from the very beginning – five out of eight players on their team are nationally-ranked. The standard of their tennis is nothing like what you're used to seeing."

"I expect you to play as true members of Hyoutei," said Sakaki. Atobe's eyes widened. _So even you don't expect us to win this one._ It was reasonable enough – Hyoutei had lost to Rikkai at this tournament, eight years in a row. But nobody played to lose.

"Excuse me," came a lilting voice from behind him. Atobe turned to see two yellow-clad players standing there. The wavy-haired boy on the left was smiling. "Sorry to interrupt, but we thought you might appreciate the return of your player."

Atobe recognised first the snoring, supine form of Akutagawa Jirou, and an exasperated growl began to form in his throat. Then he looked at the player on the right, and remembered where he'd seen that blue hair and those eyes and that cap before.

"Yukimura." Sato elbowed his way past Atobe. "It's been a long time."

Yukimura's smile shifted in a way Atobe couldn't quite define. "Sato. It _has_ been a long time, hasn't it? Let's have a good match."

Atobe turned to the other boy, who was placing Jirou down on a nearby seat. "I'm second-year Atobe Keigo," he said. "I'll be playing you in Singles Three – Sanada Genichirou."

Sanada arched an eyebrow. He seemed to share Sakaki's knack of raising a brow and having it speak volumes. "I know," he said.

"Yukimura Seiichi and Sanada Genichirou," Sato said, as the two Rikkai players returned to their seats. "With two players like that, it's hardly surprising that their school has a zero-loss record at tournaments this year."

Atobe's eyes narrowed as he watched Yukimura stop smiling and sit down, as he watched Sanada sit behind him.

"No," he was surprised to hear himself saying. "Take a closer look. It's _three_ of them."

He was not sure how to describe what he saw. It was as if a fragility that no one knew existed, an uneasiness Atobe hadn't been aware of, had been present when Sanada and Yukimura were together, and now was cured by the presence of the thin, nondescript boy – although in truth none of the three were very dramatic-looking; if Yukimura attracted attention it was because he walked as if the world had little bearing on his own existence: as if he could be winning the Japan Open or standing silent and alone by a lakeside and still be the same person. Tezuka had something of that quality as well, only with Tezuka it was less obvious.

As if on cue, a patch of blue at the periphery of his vision caught his attention, and he saw the Seigaku players sitting on the other side of the stands, Fuji Syuusuke and Tezuka Kunimitsu prominent among them.

Tezuka was not watching Marui Bunta and Yanagi Renji dominate Doubles 2. He was looking at where Sanada and Yukimura were sitting, and Sanada was looking back.

A spark of anger came to life inside him, a cold bright fury which he stored up and nurtured for the next two matches, until Singles 3 was ready to begin and he took position behind the baseline – he did his traditional routine beforehand of course, snapping his fingers and throwing his jacket and conducting the cheers, there was no way he would pass up a chance to frustrate Sato even now – and cast everything he felt into that first, arcing serve.

_What is your tennis like when you play without your friends?_ he asked Sanada, and for the first time tennis became communication for him, became something more than a pure expression of being.

Atobe was used to investing himself in the game, in putting everything he was feeling into his tennis. He was not used to having his feelings recognised in the game; unused to having them acknowledged and reflected back on the court.

Sanada Genichirou understood his question and answered it with one of his own: _Where is _your _tennis?_

The game went for half an hour and kept going. Atobe answered Sanada's heavy balls with high smashes and straight, clear volleys. It was like being drunk on endorphins. Sanada had all the single-mindedness and sheer power of Kabaji's playing, combined with the blaze and sheer anger of say, Hiyoshi. There was even a hint of subtlety to his plays; it was not clever and understated like the way Tezuka had trapped Sato, playing Sanada was like a head-on collision - but it was not with a steamroller but rather a fighter plane, full of manoeuvrability and practised technique.

Atobe's anger was swallowed up in the game and became part of the match itself, became part of the answer he wove into his tennis: _I am excellence. I am speed and power and youth and beauty._

I cannot be shaken.

_Is that so?_ asked Sanada, and there was no change in the game, just more of the same, giddy, intensity. _Then I'll shake you._

And something shifted.

He heard the name as the umpire called for a break and he returned to the sidelines, frustration dripping like sweat from his brow: _Fuurinkazan_. It made sense the moment he heard the name, even though the historical references took a moment to register.

"Can you take control of the game?" Sakaki asked. Atobe was not so much drinking water as he was gasping it in, as if he were suffocating and the cool liquid were oxygen.

Atobe said nothing, because he didn't want to say that he didn't know. Sanada's tennis was only sending one message now, and that was _I am above you_.

So this was Sanada Genichirou's tennis: destroy the opponent where he was strongest. Because attacking your enemy's weak points was unsatisfying? Or was it because it made Atobe feel this way – rootless, under attack, unsure what to rely on?

_Oshitari_, he realised as the tenth game began. Oshitari would have been able to break this, would have been able to find a way.

Of course, Oshitari would never have lasted this long against Sanada.

Defeat landed as a sickening silence, and Atobe had no wish to rally the crowd.

#

Atobe was not dropped from the regulars. Sakaki's no-fail policy was not so inflexible that it ignored the need for a strong line-up for Nationals, and it was universally agreed that 7-5 was as good a result as any Hyoutei player could have achieved against Sanada, even Sato, who was reinstated and given the Singles One spot again.

Jirou, however, lost his position for losing Doubles Two, which Atobe thought was unreasonable and would have protested, except for his mind being preoccupied with other matters.

Thanks to the lightning-speed, ever-busy Hyoutei grapevine, the whole school knew within three days that 'Atobe's furious after losing a tennis match' and to 'stay clear of him for a while' – advice that was followed by most of Hyoutei Middle School's students but acknowledged less at home, where Mother tried to console Atobe with a seemingly endless array of tactics. This earned her a series of progressively irritated scowls, until the week before Nationals when Atobe said over breakfast, "Just leave me _alone_, Mother," pushed away his scrambled eggs, and turned up early for school, hungry and disgruntled.

He watched the cold morning light gleaming on the rain-wet sports field, and had just decided to go to the library, when he spotted a slim girl with braided hair walking across the school grounds. It was Mina, the girl who'd been his vice-president when they were in elementary school.

Atobe stood by the running track and waited for her to notice him, which she did after a minute, running towards him. "Atobe-kun! You're early today."

"So are you." She caught up with him, and they walked side by side as they headed in the direction of the classrooms. Mina had to take three steps for every two of his; it was a strange experience, after six years of being the same height as or shorter than she was. "It's a surprise to see you this morning. I was just about to call you, actually."

"You- you were?" Mina's voice was hesitant, and Atobe looked at her curiously. He hadn't seen much of Mina in the past one and a half years, and while she was very much the Mina he remembered, she was different in subtle ways, in ways that he hadn't paid attention to until now This Mina was more petite, more subdued, less abrasive. She'd always been athletic and outgoing and still was, but now that quality seemed hidden beneath her blouse, her pleated skirt.

"I wanted to ask if you're running for school council executive next year? The nominations are due in next month, and a joint campaign would be an excellent tactic." Up to this moment, he'd fully expected her to say yes, but glancing at her face, he suddenly realised that might not be the case.

"School council executive? I don't know... that is, Atobe-kun, I'd love to – but I don't know if I'd be able to do a good job. I've been – busy lately, with other things. She lifted her chin to look at him, exposing her neck, and for the first time he saw the black-and-gold badge, pinned to her collar like a brooch.

"Mina," he said – incredulously, because he wasn't sure what other sort of tone to summon - "You're in the fan club? The -" _My_ fan club, he had been about so say, but it sounded awkward. They were standing outside the club rooms by now; for the past one minute they'd been walking without any real sense of direction – if Mina took one step backward her foot would be planted in a flower patch.

On impulse he reached out, and cupped her cheek with his left hand. Mina's eyes were bright with moisture and the morning sun. "I really like you, Atobe-kun."

He focused on her moving lips, and avoided thinking of all the things she wanted from him that he couldn't give, all the things he couldn't say to her because she was his friend.

He stepped closer, and found slender hands against his chest, pushing him away.

"And you don't like me, do you?" Her gaze was too clear, too steady; it reminded him of track events and Sports Days and elementary school, and maybe that was why he nodded his head, leaned down, kissed her and regretted it.

#

"Is it really the accusative? I could have sworn it was the dative." Taki Haginosuke lay spread-eagled across the bed – Atobe's bed – feet tangled in the pillows and auburn hair mingling with a dictionary, a pencil case, and a Greek textbook. "Ah, we've been doing this for way too long. My brain won't decline nouns anymore, it flatly refuses. Are you sure you don't want to leave the assignment till Monday?"

Atobe frowned without looking up from the worksheet on his desk. "No. I don't have the time, and it's not as if you're doing any work anyway, so I don't see why you're complaining."

"Grumpy, grumpy. You've been in such a _mood_ lately, what's eating you? If it's Mina, she'll get over it." From the thwapping noise and the sudden creak of springs, Haginosuke had decided that flopping up and down on the bed like a dying fish would be a diverting way to pass the time.

Atobe wasn't so concerned about his bedroom furniture that he was going to stop Haginosuke, but the other boy's words did catch his attention. "How did you know about that?"

Haginosuke stopped flopping and looked at Atobe in disbelief. " 'How do you know about that?' So asks the great Atobe Keigo, whose private life has been the foundation of our gossip since fourth grade. Face it, Atobe. If you locked yourself in Sakaki's private office and sneezed, the whole school would know you had a cold within an hour. _And_ they would be speculating about what you were doing in that office to begin with."

"...do you really think she'll get over it?" Atobe asked. All thoughts of noun declensions had fled his brain.

Haginosuke was sitting up on the bed by now. "...you know, Atobe, you shouldn't show those signs of being human too often. Shishido'll have a heart attack."

"I asked if she'll get over it," Atobe snapped. "And since when was it ever _Atobe_?"

Silence except for the sound of birds calling from outside. After a minute Haginosuke walked over and sat at the bay window, next to Atobe's desk. "She'll forgive you," he said softly. "People always do."

"Do they?" asked Atobe.

Haginosuke looked down. "I was surprised last week when Kabaji defeated Hiyoshi to become a regular."

"Ah. I didn't expect that either, to be honest." Atobe smiled at the memory. "He's turning out to be an excellent player."

"I don't like the way you treat him," Haginosuke said, and when Atobe gave him an inquiring look, "Is it right to order a friend around, as if he was your servant? Although people do expect it of you, with your personality."

"It's none of your business." Atobe said, angry. He had just offered Haginosuke something as similar to an apology as he could muster, and Haginosuke wasn't satisfied with it, wanted more, kept dredging up old hurts.

The birds were still singing. Downstairs, Mother was playing on the grand piano; Beethoven's chords crashed and rolled around the living room. Finally Haginosuke answered.

"Is that so?" He smiled – but it was not the sharp shadowed smile that Atobe had grown used to seeing; it was a vulnerable smile, awkward with frustration and distance. "I'll try to remember that, then, _buchou_."

Captain.

Atobe placed a hand on his desk, palm upward. "You know, sometimes Kabaji reminds me of you." The appalled look on Haginosuke's face forced Atobe to bite back a laugh. "You're both easy to push around. But once your limit is reached, you're utterly immoveable."

Haginosuke was studying the blue-and-gold curtains of the bay window, fiddling with the straps. When he looked up again, the old familiar mask was back; his expression was a mystery to Atobe. "Then we'd better hurry up. This translation assignment is pushing me way beyond my limit." Haginosuke returned to sitting on the bed, flipped his textbook to the correct page. "Who would have known studying the _Odyssey_ was going to be so frustrating?"

"It's frustrating for _you_," he returned. "Not at all for me."

"Greek's too easy for you," Haginosuke said, leafing through a paperback dictionary. "I'd like to say it was one of the mysterious qualities of our invincible captain, except I _know_ you spent three years reading the _Iliad_ in the original Greek when you should have been paying attention in class."

Atobe yawned. "It worked, didn't it?"

When the homework was done and Haginosuke long gone, Atobe stood in front of the bay window and watched the diminishing twilight, blue turning into inky orange turning to indigo-black. He thought of Mina and Haginosuke and all the friendships that he'd left strewn by the roadside, people who could never be what they'd once been no matter how many times he picked them up and tried to iron out the crinkles. _Keigo. Captain_. And he remembered his team, and the new responsibilities he had, and swore to himself that whatever happened, he would not lose hold of what he'd been entrusted with.

#

"Rather strange of you to call me out at a time like this," Oshitari said. He stood with his racquet dangling loosely between his hands, his glasses reflecting the sunset. "Is it because of the Junior Selection Camp next week?"

Atobe ignored his question. Above them, the evening sky was swept with clouds and streaks of gold. "Just serve the ball," he said.

Oshitari's tennis today was a question, wary and watching. Oshitari didn't throw himself into the game the way Sanada had, the way Tezuka did, but over the past few months Atobe had learned to read his movements, to look beyond the tennis and see what Oshitari was trying to do. Oshitari's motives were invariably uniform. He played for fun; he played because it was interesting. He played because he wanted to see what would happen, whether his clever experiments would pay off.

Today he was looking to see what Atobe would do, and every shot and serve was being delivered to that end.

Atobe waited three games for the perfect lob to come before he leapt up. He saw Oshitari's eyes narrow in surprise - _now what are you doing now, Atobe, and is it a fake or something new_ Atobe followed the trajectory of the ball, watched Oshitari's feet shift, already to prepared to return either a smash or a drop shot--

_I see it._ He struck, and the ball crashed into Oshitari's wrist. Oshitari's racquet flew up and spiralled outwards, fell to the ground with a clatter.

Oshitari's mouth fell open in surprise, but Atobe wasn't paying attention because he was watching the ball again, leaped up and smashed a second time. The ball went into the far corner and bounced; rolled towards the fence.

"How interesting," Oshitari said. His face was neutral. "What kind of technique is that?"

Atobe walked to the side and picked up another stray ball, ready to play again. "I call it the Hametsu e no Rondo."


	10. Part 10

**Part X**  
"I heard that Rikkai's captain Yukimura was hospitalised last week," Oshitari said, during late winter. The school year was drawing to a close, and the usual flurry of extracurricular activities had died down, replaced by the ubiquitous presence of exam revision notes and yawning, sleep-deprived students.

As usual, it took something a little more substantial than weather to stop Sakaki's club practices.

The air was sharp and chilly. Ootori, who did not tolerate the cold well, looked distinctly unhappy as he sat on the steps, hunched into an uncomfortable ball. Jirou was snoring as he lay on his side, legs curled to his chest. Kabaji sat behind Jirou, protecting the sleeping blonde boy from the gale that was sweeping across the courts.

The post-Nationals flurry of challenge matches had long since died down, and it was clear to everyone who the regulars for the coming year were going to be.

Oshitari and Gakuto were indisputably the best doubles pair in Hyoutei, winning regularly against Ootori and Haginosuke, who in turn held the pre-regulars at bay. Shishido, too, kept his position with scrappy tenacity – as the least confident of the singles players, he came in for the lion's share of challengers. Gakuto would be under the same pressure but for Oshitari, who refused to partner with anyone else.

"Uh huh. He collapsed in the middle of the courts, nobody's sure why. It sounds pretty serious, though."

Gakuto said, "Maybe he'll be ill for the entire year, and then we won't have to worry about Rikkai at the Kantou finals!"

"Don't be stupid." Atobe looked down at Gakuto. "As if they were that weak. You wouldn't last fifteen minutes against Marui Bunta, let alone that other pair of theirs. "

The sudden tightening of Oshitari's mouth didn't escape him. _Worried about your partner? Give it up. I'm the captain now._ Oshitari's ability to cover for Gakuto was what made them a formidable doubles pair, but off the court it was just annoying.

Particularly when Gakuto didn't need, or care for, that kind of protection.

"Well then, what about those two – ahh, the ones that Seigaku call their Golden Pair? Think we'd beat them?"

"All too easily," Oshitari assured him. "It wouldn't even be an interesting game."

Gakuto snickered, and Atobe lost interest. Atobe didn't concern himself with the inner workings of Hyoutei's Doubles 1 pair, as long as they continued to deliver results.

Of the regulars, the ones that did draw his attention were --

"Wakashi!" Shishido was standing at the edge of the central court, holding a crate of tennis balls. "Can you help us put away the nets?"

"Shishido-san's looks like he's in a good mood," Ootori said. He was still shivering intermittently. Atobe contemplated asking Kabaji to cover the silver-haired boy with a rug.

"Hard to believe anyone could be in a good mood, with weather like this - Shishido-_san_?" Gakuto turned to look at Ootori. "What's with that?"

Oshitari thwacked him on the shoulder. "Don't pick on Ootori like that," he said, casting an apologetic look at Ootori, who apparently had enough blood circulation left in his face to blush, even with the cold.

Would Ootori be captain of the club next year? Kabaji was the stronger player, but even Atobe couldn't imagine Kabaji leading Hyoutei. At a smaller, less materialistic school perhaps, Ohtori's abilities would have shone through. At this club, it wasn't a matter of who was qualified to lead, but who was left standing when the tussle was over. _Although there's only one obvious choice this year._

He glanced at Hiyoshi Wakashi, who was packing up the nets, dressed in a T-shirt and track pants.

In the end, it didn't matter. Whoever his successor was, Atobe was going to create a reputation that person would never be able to live up to.

April. He was looking forward to it.

#

"...a gathering place for the weak." He caught the girl's wrist as she lunged at him. "You know, you're cute when you're angry."

The girl – An, was that her name? - yanked her hand away. She _was_ pretty; it was a pity their first meeting was progressing so badly. But it would hardly have been amusing if she hadn't put up a fight.

Of course, it was more interesting when someone capable of a _real_ fight – one with tennis, that is - came along. Even if he hadn't intended to force the girl to begin with.

"We'll take the loss," he said. "What's your name?"

The spiky-haired player was still breathless from returning Kabaji's ball, but he grinned as he spoke: "I'm a second-year at Seigaku, Momoshiro Takeshi."

_One of yours, Tezuka?_ Strength and strategy; not a bad combination. Atobe smiled.

"Wait, I'm Fudoumine's Kamio Akira!"

He turned. "I didn't ask for your name."

Later, Atobe watched Shishido lose 6-1 and wondered what Tachibana was getting revenge for: harassing his sister, belittling his vice-captain, or underestimating his team?

He suspected that Tachibana cared less about those things than he did about making it to Nationals. Nevertheless, the irony remained.

#

"You lost." It was half-past five, long after club activities ended for the day. The corridor was silent, abandoned; filled with still shadows and dim light. Atobe would not be here, if he hadn't left his electronic dictionary in his locker.

_Shishido and Ootori. They're going to be the strongest doubles pair we've ever had. Stronger than Oshitari and Gakuto._ But the way in which it had happened...

"Shishido deserved to win." Haginosuke stood in front of Atobe's locker, his fingers tracing the cracks between the door and the metal frame. "After all those years of losing, it's small recompense."

"Haginosuke, I --" The other boy lifted a hand, cutting off his words before he could continue speaking.

"There's no need to apologise. I belong to Hyoutei too, remember?"

Atobe frowned. "You belong to Hyoutei, and you can still talk like that?"

"What's wrong with that?" Haginosuke's voice was soft. Amidst the emptiness, it was almost eerie. "Say Atobe, have you ever planned out what you want to do with your life?"

"We're going to win Nationals," he said, and he believed it as he spoke.

"Then, what are you going to do once we win Nationals?"

"I'll win the National Under-18 Open, of course. Then I'll keep playing international tournaments." He looked up at the ceiling. "I won't stop until I'm satisfied that tennis has nothing more to offer."

"And after that?"

Atobe looked down again. The floor seemed like a sheet of distant, murky grey. At the far end of the corridor, orang patches of sunlight came in through the windows. "Well, I always thought I'd like to study in England. I hear that Oxford's Classics department is excellent."

"That sounds wonderful." Haginosuke straightened himself, and stepped aside, allowing Atobe to reach his locker. "Here." He held out a sheaf of papers. "You missed German class today because of student council, right? The teacher asked me to pass these to you."

Atobe took the notes. "Thanks. You could have given them to me some other time, you know."

"I like this time." He was already turning to leave. "Is it okay if I skip club practice for a few days? I promise I'll be there to cheer you on, this Sunday."

"It'll be all right. Take as much time as you need," Atobe said, watching Taki's retreating back.

#

The day that Hyoutei lost to Seigaku at the Kantou regionals, Atobe found Sanada Genichirou standing alone in the carpark. The Rikkai vice-captain was holding a mobile phone in his hand, and scowling – at least, scowling more than he usually did.

"It's been a difficult year for you, hasn't it?"

Sanada looked up, a flash of surprise in his eyes. It was indicative of how distracted he was that he hadn't noticed Atobe's presence. But he was belligerent as ever.

"Speak for yourself," he said. "Unlike you, we plan on winning the Nationals."

Sanada was not in the mood to talk. But Atobe had never before felt the way he was feeling right now: the beauty, the glory of the _game_ still running through him, and the unreal, heartsick feeling of loss.

He didn't think anyone could understand what he was going through, short of Tezuka himself. But this person came close.

"I beat him first," he said. "Tezuka Kunimitsu."

Sanada placed the mobile back in his pocket. "Yes; I was watching."

"You ought to play him some day," Atobe said. "Tezuka is the real thing." Like standing in a thunderstorm, he thought, and being drenched in its rains. Like never wanting to be dry again.

Sanada didn't reply.

"How is Yukimura?" he asked, and was unsurprised to note the tension in Sanada's face.

"He'll be admitted to hospital again this Thursday." Sanada picked up the racquet bag lying at his feet. "Excuse me, but I need to be getting back home."

"Sanada!" he called. The boy stopped, turned. "Don't lose to anyone before I've broken the _Zan_."

Sanada raised his brows. "What a pointless request."

Some things would never change, Atobe decided, watching Sanada's long black shadow as it retreated across the carpark, eventually disappearing into a bus filled with whoops of glee and raucous teenage boy laughter.

Other things changed too quickly.

#

"There. It's all yours." The locker door clanged as he slammed it shut. Atobe looked up to see Hiyoshi staring at him. "I said, it's all yours. Don't gape like that, it looks stupid."

Hiyoshi stepped forward tentatively, looking at the oversized locker that traditionally belonged to the tennis club captain. "...thank you."

Atobe shook his head as he gathered his things into his satchel. "It's Sakaki who chose you for the position, so you can thank him instead. If you really want to thank me, do it by winning Nationals next year."

Hiyoshi, to his credit, remained silent as Atobe left the locker room.

Sakaki was standing outside, wearing slacks and a polo-shirt. He inclined his head in greeting when he saw Atobe.

"You were looking for me?" Atobe said.

They fell into step as they walked towards the tennis courts. When they arrived there, Sakaki turned to him and said: "Tell me, Atobe, were you satisfied with your time as captain this year?"

Atobe looked at the tennis courts, stared past them to the trees and office buildings that surrounded Hyoutei Gakuen, and beyond that, to the fog-obscured clouds beyond. "I'll never be satisfied."

"Is that so?" Sakaki followed Atobe's gaze and looked outwards; for several moments they stood silently, alone amidst the tennis courts. Then he said: "Would you prefer a one-set or a three-set match? I believe I made a promise to you that still has to be honoured."

Atobe's eyes widened, and he turned to Sakaki. Then he smirked. "I'll get the racquets."

#

That evening he stood outside the school gates, and gazed at the horizon where the sun was dipping, sinking beneath the sky in anticipation of a future dawn. "Come on, Kabaji, let's go."

"Yes."

He was Atobe Keigo.


End file.
